Currículom Vs Knowledge

Late to
Class
Social Class and
Schooling in the
New Economy
Edited by Jane A. Van Galen and George W. Noblit

Foreword by Michael W. Apple
Late to Class
SUNY series, Power, Social Identity, and Education
Lois Weiss, editor

Late to Class
Social Class and Schooling
in the New Economy
Edited by
Jane A. Van Galen
and
George W. Noblit
Foreword by
Michael W. Apple
State University of New York Press

Published by
State University of New York Press, Albany
2007 State University of New York
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in Publication Data
Late to class : social class and schooling in the new economy / edited
by Jane A. Van Galen, George W. Noblit ; foreword by Michael W. Apple.
p. cm. (Suny series, power, social identity, and education)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7914-7093-0 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-7914-7094-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Educational sociology. 2. Social classes. I. Van Galen, Jane. II. Noblit,
George W.
LC191.L293 2007
306.43'2dc22
2006020754
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS
Foreword vii
Introduction 1
Jane A. Van Galen
PART 1: GETTING TO CLASS
1. Growing Up as Poor, White Trash:

Stories of Where I Come From 19
Beth Hatt
2. Class/Culture/Action: Representation, Identity, and
Agency in Educational Analysis 29
Bill J. Johnston
PART 2: CLASS WORK
3. Living Class as a Girl 55

Deborah Hicks and Stephanie Jones
4. Marginalization and Membership 87
Jill Koyama and Margaret A. Gibson
5. Orchestrating Habitus and Figured Worlds: Chicana/o
Educational Mobility and Social Class 113
Luis Urrieta Jr.
6. High School Students Exploration of Class Differences
in a Multicultural Literature Class 141
Richard Beach, Daryl Parks, Amanda Thein, and
Timothy Lensmire
7. Social Class and African-American Parental Involvement 167
Cheryl Fields-Smith
v
vi Contents
8. Social Heteroglossia: The Contentious Practice or Potential

Place of Middle-Class Parents in HomeSchool Relations 203
Janice Kroeger
PART 3: AFTER CLASS
9. (Re)Turning to Marx to Understand the Unexpected Anger

Among Winners in Schooling: A Critical Social
Psychology Perspective 235
Ellen Brantlinger
10. The Problem of Poverty: Shifting Attention to the
Non-Poor
Maike Ingrid Philipsen 269
11. Intersections on the Back Road: Class, Culture, and
Education in Rural and Appalachian Places 287
Van Dempsey
12. Class-Dclass 313
George W. Noblit
List of Contributors 347
Name Index 353
Subject Index 361
FOREWORD
As I began writing this foreword, the images of the tragedies unfolding

in New Orleans were everywhere. The deaths and destruction, the human
drama of trying to survive in conditions that were almost beyond com-
prehension, all of this and more, were ever-present, and rightly so. There
were jarring words that kept emanating from the media, with sentences
such as, This was the worst natural disaster ever to be experienced by
the United States. Yet these words sat side by side with more explana-
tions. It could have been avoided. This latter sentence seems much
more compelling to me.
Why? The horrors of New Orleans are not explainable by phrases
such as natural disaster. This situation had its genesis not in a hurri-
cane, but rather in a slow-moving political and ideological storm that
eroded our collective sensitivities, which consciously refused to fund pub-
lic institutions, which saw public as being by definition bad and private
as being by definition good, which engaged in one of the most massive
programs of (upward) income redistribution in the history of our nation,
and in a willful refusal to take seriously the possible effects of all of this
on our economy, on the public infrastructure, on our educational in-
stitutions, on our social ethics, and on the structures of inequality of the
larger society. In short, this was about class and its interconnections with
race (see also Apple, 2000, 2006).
Yet, an understanding that class counts and counts in absolutely cru-
cial ways has largely withered in the United States. This is constantly
brought home to me when I am outside our borders. When I am in Brazil,
or England, or Koreaor nearly anywhere elsethe comparative ab-
sence of class discourses and understandings in the United States is so
striking that one realizes that it has taken more than a century of creative
ideological work by dominant groups to create a situation in which class
talk seems either strange or somehow almost illegitimate in this nation.
Yet, I and many others have argued that classand its complex in-
tersections with race and gendermust be taken much more seriously
vii
viii Michael W. Apple
than it has been in most of the ways in which we think about this soci-
ety and especially about educational policy and practice. It is interesting
that some of the best work on how we might best understand class has
actually been done in the United States (see, e.g., Weis, 2004; Wright,
1978, 1985, 1989, 1997). And even the popular best-seller list will oc-
casionally feature a book on the realities of, say, the upwardly mobile
fractions of affluent classes (Brooks, 2000) or on the lives of the poor
(Ehrenreich, 2001; Shipler, 2004). Given all of this, however, it still
feels as if we need to constantly swim upstream to take class relations as
seriously as they deserve in education. The book you are about to read
helps rectify this situation.
There are important questions that need to be asked about class.
What are the processes by which class inequalities are reproduced over
generations and thereby over decades and even over centuries? How do
the affluent and the middle classes retain their privileges and power in na-
tions like the United States as well as other parts of the world? How have
the affluent and the middle classes proved successful in resisting legisla-
tive attempts, such as increased educational opportunities for disadvan-
taged groups, to create more equality? Does this mean that such efforts
have basically been a failure? Should governments do more or less to deal
with such inequalities (Devine, 2004, p. 172)?
To these questions a number of others need to be asked. What roles
do our educational institutions play in reproducing or interrupting class
dynamics? What are the interconnections among different dynamics
of dominance and subordination inside and outside schooling? How is
class experienced? Do these lived experiences provide the space for coun-
terhegemonic possibilities? What can education and educators do to ex-
pand these spaces? An emerging body of literature has sought to deal
with a number of these issues (see, e.g., Anyon, 2005; Apple, 2006; Apple
and Buras, 2006). The book you are about to read continues this path in
important ways.
In order to answer these and other questions, we need to remember
that what class means is more than simply ones place in an economic
structure. In essence, class needs to be seen not only as a noun but as a
verb. This is made clear in the following quote: Class has both objective
and subjective components. That is, it is not simply a position, but a com-
plex lived cultural and bodily reality. It is a process, not merely a thing.
Thus, it should always be seen not as a static entity, but as a set of
processes that are both creative and destructive and in constant motion.
Furthermore, it is a relational concept in that it is defined in opposition to
other classes. Finally, it is historically contingent (McNall, Levine, and
Fantasia 1991, p. 4).
Foreword ix
The realization of such nuances may make class analysis more

complicated, but who ever said that understanding the social realities
and inequalitiesand the struggles to change such realities and in-
equalities inside and outside of schoolswas easy? But even given the
conceptual and historical complexity of the ways in which class func-
tions as a structure and as a process, as both economic and cultural, it
is still more than a little visible in our daily lives inside and outside of
educational institutions. Let me give a concrete example of how this
works in real life.
I have taught at the University of Wisconsin in Madison for over
three decades. Certain conditions have now had predictable effects, such
things as budget cuts, the ever-rising cost of going to college, the fact that
employment security for many working-class and middle-class people is
now nearly nonexistent, and the high rates of under- and unemployment;
the list could go on and onall of these conditions have changed the
character of my university and of so many others. Thus, the average fam-
ily income of the entering class at Wisconsin is reported to be over twenty
thousand dollars higher than before (and rising), this at a time when fam-
ily incomes among many groups have either stagnated or fallen. This is
one of the best indicators of who gets to study at world-class universi-
ties and who does not. It stands as a mute witness to the ways in which
income is linked to social advantage in complicated ways.
To say that there are connections between income and advantage is
to repeat a truism. However, is this condition totally explained by eco-
nomic resources? We might say, along with Fiona Devine (2004), that in-
come is usually a necessary condition, but it is not sufficient. Cultural and
social resources are crucial as well. Particular dispositions, propensities,
and appreciationsand an ease in displaying themas well as who
you know, play important roles here. Readers familiar with Pierre Bour-
dieu will recognize that this equates with his taxonomy of various kinds
of capital: economic, cultural, and social. Bourdieu has argued that in
terms of class advantage, symbolic struggles count and they count in im-
portant ways. At the same time, however, they are also struggles over
economic and political power, as well as cultural power. There are com-
plicated conversion strategies at play here, in which the accumulation of
one form of capitalsay, cultural capitalis used to trade for social
and economic capital (Bourdieu, 1984). The ways in which such class
conversion strategies privilege particular class actors in education, and
de-power others, is striking and an analysis of these strategies is crucial if
we are to more fully comprehend the ways in which the struggle over
what counts as legitimate culture versus popular culture are so im-
portant in this society (Apple, 2006).
x Michael W. Apple
The authors included here, recognize the importance of these struggles

and of the ways in which differently positioned actors engage in them. The
authors are unusually reflective about their own structural location and
about the dangers of imposing their solutions on others. All too much of
the socially and culturally critical literature in education is written in such
a way that it is either largely rhetorical or so overly theorized that its style
itself serves to latently act as a new rule of exclusion. The authors are
aware of the need for conceptual and empirical substance.
But this is not all. In the process of demonstrating the realities of class
and of why we need to focus on class analysis, they are also fully aware
of the ways in which class experiences are formed out of the intersections
of race and gender as well. The word experiences is important here.
The book illuminates not simply structural positions, but lived experi-
ences. In this way, it is able to show us class as a process that includes
moments of meaning making, struggle and resistance as well as domina-
tion (see also, Dance, 2002; Fine and Weis, 1998).
Finally, and in my mind one of the most important characteristics of
the book, is its attempt to answer the question of What is to be done?
By taking seriously the issue of emancipatory pedagogies (the plural is
crucial here), they are not satisfied with bearing witness to negativity
although this is a crucial act for researchers to engage in. They also want
to open the spaces for possible interruption and intervention. As I have
argued at length elsewhere, this is one of the more significant roles that
critical scholars can play in a time of conservative attacks on everything
we hold dear (Apple, 1996, 2006, Apple et al., 2003). For all of these rea-
sons and more, this is a book that deserves our attention.
Michael W. Apple
References
Anyon, J. 2005. Radical possibilities: Public policy, urban education, and a new
social movement. New York: Routledge.
Apple, M. W. 1996. Cultural politics and education. New York: Teachers College
Press.
. 2006. Educating the right way: Markets, standards, God, and
inequality, 2nd ed. New York: Routledge.
Apple, M. W. et al. 2003. The state and the politics of knowledge. New York:
RoutledgeFalmer.
Apple, M. W. and Buras, K. (Eds.) 2006. The subaltern speak: Curriculum,
power, and educational struggles. New York: Routledge.
Bourdieu, P. 1984. Distinction. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Brooks, D. 2000. Bobos in paradise: The new upper class and how they got there.
New York: Simon & Schuster.
Foreword xi
Dance, L. J. 2002. Tough Fronts: The impact of street culture on schooling. New
York: RoutledgeFalmer.
Devine, F. 2004. Class practices: How parents help their children get good jobs.
New York: Cambridge University Press.
Ehrenreich, B. 2001. Nickel and dimed: On (not) getting by in America. New
York: Metropolitan Books.
Fine, M. and Weis, L. 1998. The unknown city: Lives of poor and working class
young adults. Boston: Beacon Press.
McNall, S., Levine R., and Fantasia, R. 1991. Introduction. In S. McNall,
R. Levine, R. Fantasia (Eds.) Bringing class back in (pp. 113). Boulder:
Westview Press.
Shipler, D. 2004. The working poor: Invisible in America. New York: Knopf.
Weis, L. 2004. Class reunion: The remaking of the white working class. New
York: Routledge.
Wright, E. O. 1978. Class, crisis, and the state. New York: New Left Books.
. 1985. Classes. New York: Verso.
. 1989. The debate on classes. New York: Verso.
. 1997. Class counts: Comparative studies in class analysis. New York:
Cambridge University Press.
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INTRODUCTION
Jane A. Van Galen
Nowhere is there a more intense silence about the realities of class

differences than in educational settings.
bell hooks
What does it mean to speak of social class in the United States at the
beginning of the twenty-first century? In times when the social terrain
between the haves and have-nots has grown ever wider, how can
renewed consideration of social class deepen our analyses of educational
reformreform that has been invoked in the name of global economic
competitiveness and opportunity? Why, even as weve come far in our
understanding of race, ethnicity, and gender in schooling, do we seem to
be late to class?
The authors in this volume, who found such questions particularly
compelling, present theoretical, empirical, and pedagogical perspectives
on social class and schooling in the United States. In compiling this col-
lection, we hope to provoke a critique of the assumptions of classless-
ness (Reay, 1998) within which educational reform and education
research has too often been constructed, toward the eventual goal of gen-
erating dialogue about the new meanings of class in U.S. schools in a
rapidly shifting economy.
We believe that we have been late in coming to these conversations.
As Sherry L. Linkon (1999, pp. 23) has observed, the principles of in-
clusion and recognition that have been so important in creating spaces for
gender studies, black studies, queer studies, and ethnic studies [in educa-
tional settings] have generally not been extended to class. Within the
litany of race class and gender among critical scholars, class analyses
1
2 Jane A. Van Galen
are by far the least developed. Apart from a long tradition of study of
the schooling of poor urban children of color, educational researchers
have paid relatively limited attention to the complexities of social class
in shaping educational experiences in the new economy of knowledge
and service work (Brantlinger, 1993, 2003; Brown, 1998; Chafel, 1996;
Faulkner, 1995; Grant and Sleeter, 1996; ODair, 1993; Van Galen,
2000, 2004; Weis, 1990; Zandy, 1990).
While the academy is relatively silent about class, public discourse
about the purposes of schooling actively denies its existence. As state and
federal policy resonates with promises of opportunity if only individuals
learn more, neither students nor their teachers have access to alternative
interpretive lenses for explaining and navigating the constraints of their
shared institutional lives. As Julie Bettie (2003, p. 195) observes, class is
largely missing as a category of identity offered by popular culture and
political discourse in the early twenty-first century United States. Class is
not a central category of thought, making it difficult to have a cultural or
political class identity.
How, then, do we revive conversations about class? Marxist analyses
and functionalist justifications no longer seem to work, but scholars have
been less clear about how to conceive of class within newer theoretical
perspectives. As Susan L. Robertson (2000, p. 19) observes, scholarship
on class is confounded by
. . . profound economic, political, and intellectual changes marking

our time. The numerical decline of the old manual or working class,
the emergence of new forms of post-Fordist production, the shift in
employment and investment from production to consumption, together
with the new intellectual currents centred around feminist/identity poli-
tics and the individualism of neoliberalism, have all worked to challenge
the sovereignty of class and dislodge it as a fundamental analytical tool
in social theory. . . . It has become unfashionable in academic circles to
talk about class, as if class suddenly no longer mattered and the historic
concerns of class theoristssuch as inequalityhave disappeared.
The authors in this volume have worked to illuminate what few in

their research settings could even have named: the shifting landscape of
social class in the lives of young people and their families, and in the
work of their schools.
This book was crafted against a backdrop of unprecedented policy
work that presupposes that schools can equalize opportunity for all
(Aronowitz, 2003, p. 25). State and federal educational policy reverber-
ates with confidence in the inherent fairness of life outside of school; stan-
Introduction 3
dards-based reform policies promise that after a long history of sorting

and stratification, schools, will, at long last, bring poor and working-
class children into opportunity limited only by their own ambitions.
Yet the promise of personal and global prosperity toward which
young people are encouraged to aspire is contradicted by basic labor
market data: the most rapid job growth is not among high-tech, high-
wage sectors of the economy, but rather among low-wage service-sector
jobs, few of which require high levels of education or skill (Bureau of
Labor Statistics, 2000). Recent volatility in technology sectors and in the
stock market, outsourcing, and the rise of contract work have left even
highly educated workers experiencing an unprecedented sense of eco-
nomic vulnerability (Berhnhardt et al., 2001; Ehrenreich, 1989; Perucci
and Wysong, 1999). Even as academic and political interest in social class
may have waned, movement through and within the rules of a new eco-
nomic landscape has become turbulent for many families.
As recent social theorists have noted, the lived experience of class
runs more deeply than economics. As M. Zweig (2000, p. 11) succinctly
notes, Class is about the power some people have over the lives of
others, and the powerlessness most people experience as a result. If
power does matter in the shifting landscapes of economic stratification,
the challenge of closing achievement gaps (and ultimately, economic
gaps) between poor and working-class children and their more privileged
peers would not be a matter of simply enabling the lower-achieving stu-
dents to catch up in competitiveness for a diminishing number of mid-
dle-class jobs. Instead, in times of volatile wealth and eroding job security
across class lines, those with the power to do so are likely to position
their own children at the winning ends of ever-more uneven playing fields
(Brantlinger, 2003; Lareau, 1989, 2003; Lareau and Shumar, 1996;
Reay, 1998). Quite simply, if children who currently are not doing well in
school begin to do well, those for whom schooling now works would find
ways do even better. While business leaders and policy makers may have
envisioned a generally stronger and smarter workforce for a global econ-
omy coming from school reform, middle-class parents sensing their own
economic vulnerability are likely to infer that in a rapidly changing and
very competitive labor market, their own children had very well better
become stronger and smarter than everyone else.
As Pierre Bourdieu (1984, p. 133) notes:
When class factions who previously made little use of the school sys-
tem enter the race for academic qualifications, the effect is to force the
groups whose reproduction was mainly or exclusively achieved through
education to step up their investments so as to maintain the relative
4 Jane A. Van Galen
scarcity of their qualifications and, consequently, their positions in the

class structure. Academic qualifications and the school system which
awards them thus become one of the key stakes in an interclass compe-
tition which generates a general and continuous growth in the demand
for education and an inflation of academic qualifications.
In this volume, then, scholars will examine the educational experi-

ences of poor, working-class and middle-class students against the back-
drop of complicated class stratification generated by a shifting global
economy. Together, the chapters will explore the salience of class in un-
derstanding the social, economic, and cultural landscapes within which
young people in the United States come to understand the meaning of
their formal education in times of shifting opportunity.
The Chapters
As readers consider these individual chapters and the collection as a
whole, we hope to generate dialogue in several areas.
Coming of Age in the Shifting Landscape of Class

First, the collection offers intriguing glimpses into the meaning that
young people make of schooling as they come to terms with their relative
power and status, even as they are likely to have little fomal understand-
ing of the myriad ways in which their lives are shaped by class stratifica-
tion. In the new economy, class has been rendered nearly invisible. As
Valerie Walkerdine (2003, p. 241) has observed, We no longer have a
large manufacturing base which provides the pivot for an understanding
of class stratification based on class divisions. What used to be the work-
ing class is now dispersed into service industries based on individual con-
tracts, piecework, home work and work in call centres, with jobs for life
having disappeared.
Unlike the lads of Paul Williss (1977) classic study of working-class
youths in an industrial community, young people today cannot frame
their sense of the meaning of school within alternate, oppositional iden-
tities. Today, young people growing up at the margins of the economy do
not face the more stark tensions between identities as workers and aspi-
rations toward more; instead, the children and grandchildren of fac-
tory workers are more likely to embark upon career paths such as those
that culminate, after years of shuffling documents, in their appointment
as assistant manager of the night shift of the copy center. Meanwhile,
those who in previous generations may have assumed that the profes-
sional positions were theirs for the taking are now more likely to contract
Introduction 5
themselves (and in the process, reinvent themselves) through a series of

shifting corporate alliances and career changes.
How then, do young people coming of age in todays economy come to
understand who they might become? As Ellen A. Brantlinger notes in her
chapter, whether consciously or not, identity is shaped around social class
markers, and in the shifting landscape of the new economy, even middle-
class students experience commodification, alienation, and exploitation in
the processes through which social distinctions are generated and sustained.
A number of chapters in this volume, then, consider the ways in
which poor, working-, and middle-class students form identities of pos-
sibility, even while explicit identities of class may elude them. Deborah
Hicks and Stephanie Jones draw us into the lives of young girls on the far
social fringes of their communities, weighing the invitation to venture fur-
ther into the alien but communal terrain of literacy. In the work of Luis
Urrieta Jr. and of Jill Kayoma and Stephanie Jones, we encounter ambi-
tious, talented, and academically driven working-class students of color
whose sense of self is crafted within daily interactions with more privi-
leged peers, many of whom assume that they have already earned the
right to disdainfully exclude the lower-status students by virtue of their
superior academic and social accomplishments (Bullock, 1995, p. 125).
In the chapter by Richard Beach, Daryl Parks, Amanda Thein, and Tim-
othy Lensmire, we observe working-class youths who have earned a place
in a program for students with academic aspirations, struggling with ac-
knowledging the privileges of their whiteness while at the same time grap-
pling with their class oppression.
In each of these chapters, we see poor and working-class students tal-
lying the relative costs of loyal identification with their economically vul-
nerable families, against the untested hope that schooling can, and will,
serve the interests of people like them. Meanwhile, in Brantlingers re-
casting of her previous work on class, we see the winners also coming
to slowly understand that while they may be on top, they have precious
little idea of how to navigate the rules of a game that are no longer stable
nor clear, even though they had thought that success in school would
have assured them of their capacity to succeed as a constantly changing
successful entrepreneur of oneself (Walkerdine, 2003, p. 241).
We see these young people living out the central questions of class,
always at the intersections of gender and ethnicity and geography, yet
rarely able to name the myriad ways in which their lives are shaped by
cultural and economic influences that operate well beyond the reaches of
own agency.
Writing of girls at the center of these social confluences, Julie Bettie
(2003, p. 190) observes: Girls sorted through all of this and began
drawing conclusions about what is or is not for the likes of me and my
6 Jane A. Van Galen
kind as friendships were increasingly organized by race/ethnicity and

class as girls began to formulate identities based on the possible futures
they imagined for themselves.
While academic attainment is certainly a part of the construction of
a possible future, the complex social fabric of school and community of-
fers much more powerful messages of what one is entitled to imagine for
oneself. For children coming of age in decaying industrial towns, in iso-
lated rural communities, in schools in which the haves display clear
and exclusionary advantage, much more than rising test scores would be
needed to invigorate the imagination.
Because identify is formed within particular social spaces, these chap-
ters suggest that we can learn much more about the formation of class
identities by also considering more carefully the geographic and cultural
contexts of schooling, Most of the studies in this volume were conducted
in diverse urban settings, in which relative privilege is always visible to
young people. Whether to suggest things that might be possible for them-
selves, or to underscore the seemingly insurmountable social distances be-
tween themselves and others, young people in metropolitan areas have
regular encounters with individuals from broad class backgrounds. One
can imagine the coalition building advocated in Noblits chapter taking
place in vibrant metropolitan areas, in which young people will have daily
encounters with those living very different lives. Yet as Van Dempsey re-
minds us, most poor and working-class students live in small towns and
rural areas, and the social cohesion and relative homogeneity of these
communities may simultaneously mask the their relative disadvantage
while also narrowing the range of possible futures to which they might as-
pire. What might we better understand about stratification and opportu-
nity by becoming more mindful of the cultural geographies within which
identities are formed?
And finally, how might we imagine ways in which repressive educa-
tional structures might be circumvented? Might we imagine new possibil-
ities for pedagogies of the poor and working class through which young
people might come to imagine new possibilities for themselves and for
their communities? The authors of these chapters offer a foretaste of pos-
sible new frameworks for exploring class, in part by reconsidering what it
might mean to envision schooling as a genuine instrument of possibility.
Social Mobility: Probing the Fractures in the System

While clearly documenting the numerous ways in which poor and working-
class students come to understand the limits of what is for the likes of me
and my kind, the chapters also offer intriguing glimpses of fractures within
the system, as we encounter those for whom schooling seems to be working
Introduction 7
as an avenue of social mobility. We are long overdue for scrutiny of the

experiences of the ones who got away (Reay, 1997, p. 20) in spite of the
obvious constraints of schooling and the economy. While we have amassed
considerable data about achievement gaps between more privileged students
and their less-privileged peers, we know relatively little about the experi-
ences of those for whom education has opened doors. While each of the au-
thors in this volume would concede that social mobility through schooling
is very much the exception rather than the norm, each would also likely
concede that we can understand more about oppressive social structures
when we better understand the limits of their reach.
We venture cautiously into this discussion, for as Brantlinger wisely
cautions, we must distinguish between social mobility that genuinely does
mark fractures in the system and other forms of mobility that merely fos-
ter mythical ideologies of opportunity for those who work hard. For too
long, Brantlinger observes, success stories have been used to merely bol-
ster and mystify divisive relationships between more privileged and sub-
ordinate students, as the successes of a few are then turned against their
many peers.
Yet these chapters complicate each of these positions, and closer
scrutiny of the schooling of the young people in these chapters suggest
rich terrain for further study.
Across these chapters, for example, we see much more than the indi-
vidual ambitions of particular students. We see, instead, students being
supported by quietly subversive teachers, by educational programs built
to counterbalance formal school structures, by the advocacy of parents
(their own and others), and by community activists offering young people
alternative narratives for understanding the work of their schools. We
simply do not see students making it through the complicated social
structures of school on their own merit alone.
As we meet these young people who are poised to circumvent the lim-
its of their lives and their schooling, we most often do so in places other
than the traditional classroom. Beach and his colleagues write of a rare
and rigorous college prep program created for students in a working-class
high school. Urrieta powerfully documents the processes by which some
poor and working-class Chicana/o students are actively recruited into ed-
ucational structures that will provide material and symbolic capital for
their educational success. In his work, the synchronized advocacy of com-
munity activists, teachers, and parents enabled students to imagine new
possibilities for themselves. Kayoma and Gibson write of support systems
created explicitly to enable students to construct identities other than
those ascribed to them by higher-status students and by teachers and that
enable them to envision success in school on their own terms. Hicks and
Jones, in their after school literacy program, invite young girls to more
8 Jane A. Van Galen
closely read their communities and their formal schooling and to imagine
other possibilities for themselves.
Other chapters suggest more possibilities. Both Fields-Smith and
Kroeger portray families exercising agency that includes action for the
collective good, and their work enriches a literature that too often repre-
sents parent involvement in single dimensions. These chapters suggest
(as Noblit notes in his chapter) that teachers and parents might well move
beyond adversarial relationships to explore potential alliances in the
interest of creating better schools for all children.
Yet there is more beneath the telling of these stories than mere inspi-
rational accounts of attaining the American Dream. Instead, these stories
collectively reveal how complicated the work of upward mobility is. For
example, its clear that the resources available to the successful students
in these chapters are simply not available to all who might benefit from
their supports. In defining recipients of these resources as distinctively tal-
ented, school structures that sort on the basis of race, class, and gender
remain unchallenged. In Urrietas chapter, for example, access to the ad-
vocacy of teachers was often dependent upon allowing oneself to be de-
fined as smarter and otherwise different from ones peers, complicating
the development of a healthy ethnic identity. Often too, the strategies
used to facilitate the success of students are merely borrowed from the
strategies long invoked by middle-class white students and by their par-
ents, strategies that obviously intensify the competition for limited re-
sources but do nothing to broaden the discourse about why resources are
so limited in the first place. One might ask the parents in the Fields-Smith
chapter, for example, if rather than stepping into the traditionally sup-
portive and subservient roles of parent involvement, African-American
(and other) parents might also negotiate new roles for themselvesroles
that Kroeger suggests will be essential if schools are to serve diverse pop-
ulations well.
Clearly, then, in some schools, poor and working-class students are
being invited to the game, and in others, the very rules of the game are
being subject to greater scrutiny by students who enjoy the advocacy of
mentors and advocates. Yet its clear that this is not enough. The game
itself continues as privilege defends itself. The rules still favor more priv-
ileged students, and the costs of the game are still extraordinarily high for
poor and working-class students.
For all of the obvious limitations of the avenues to mobility repre-
sented here, these chapters also suggest that there is much more going
on beneath the radar that warrants our collective curiosity. We see
here the potential of extra-institutional structures, of student support
groups that enable the formation of alternative identities, of the alter-
native renditions of parent involvement, and of community cultural
Introduction 9
brokers who name the obstacles that they have faced in pursuing possi-
bilities that schooling itself did not open to them. We need to under-
stand these possibilities.
In these chapters there also are glimpses of how the very structure of
school itself might be otherwise.
Poor and Working-Class Pedagogy

While we have come to envision varieties of feminist pedagogy or of crit-
ical multicultural education, we are harder pressed to imagine schooling
in which poor and working-class students recognize themselves in the
curriculum and discover their voices within the pedagogy. In these times
in which the purposes of formal education have been narrowed to prepa-
ration for work in an increasingly competitive labor market, it has be-
come difficult to imagine how school might serve deeper purposes of
justice and equity. What alternatives can we imagine? What would the
ends of such a new pedagogy be? As the authors of this volume attest, we
cannot simply settle for enabling more students to attain individual mo-
bility; nor can we settle simply for more working-class students acquiring
the analytic and intellectual capital of middle-class peers. These questions
point us toward questions of a pedagogy of class.
Critical scholars have long embraced a political project of critical
pedagogy for public schooling. Lynch and ONeill (1994, p. 313), how-
ever, question the very assumption that government-sponsored schools
that now serve the interests of the powerful will ever become sites of
emancipatory curriculum and pedagogy. Apart from isolated pockets
of critical practice, there is little evidence that years of academic writing
of the possibilities of a Friere-ian model of learning have led to significant
changes in the schools of poor and working-class children, and while we
might continue our advocacy for more politicized forms of schooling, we
might also expand the conversation to consider additional possibilities.
In pursuing these projects, we must first acknowledge that focusing on
the schools of lower-status children can never be enough, for as Noblit
writes in this volume, From race we have learned that what must be
changed is whiteness, from gender we have learned that what must be
changed is patriarchy, and from class I will argue we learn that what must
be changed is hierarchy. Maike Ingrid Philipsen and Brantlinger each
write in their chapters that we must imagine a pedagogy of privilege in
which the haves come to realize how they benefit from the hierarchies
that suppress the accomplishments of poor and working-class children.
How, then, to begin? The chapters in this volume suggest that we
might explore two interconnected avenues: The first is to pursue what we
have begun here: to examine extraschool structures and supports that are
10 Jane A. Van Galen
working to open new ways of creating meaning out of the formal struc-
tures of school, and the second is to explore what a pedagogy of class it-
self might entail.
LOOKING MORE CLOSELY AT WHAT IS THERE. As academics have examined

schools for evidence that classrooms are invoking particularly politicized
forms of curriculum and pedagogy, we are perhaps missing more subtle
ways in which teachers work on behalf of poor and working class chil-
dren. Michael Apple (1995, p. 146) suggests that in early efforts within
critical research traditions to cast teachers as powerless agents of capi-
tialist forces, scholars have missed the potential in teachers resistance
to formal and informal mechanisms of stratification. He notes: Just as
blue- and white-collar workers have constantly found ways to retain their
humanity and continually struggle to integrate conception and execution
in their work . . . so too will teachers and students find ways, in the
cracks, so to speak, to do the same things. The real question is not
whether such resistances exist . . . but whether they are contradictory
themselves, whether they lead anywhere beyond the reproduction of the
ideological hegemony of the most power classes in our society, whether
they can be employed for political education and intervention. . . . Our
task is first to find them.
Resistance is evident in many of the chapters in this book. Noblit
suggests that we look more carefully at the ways in which teachers invoke
caring and relation to shelter students from the harshest manifestations of
school reforms. Urrieta writes of teachers who actively resisted stereo-
types of Chicano/a students to formally designate some as smart and
worthy of extra school recourses. Facing prescriptive literacy curriculum
in the schools in the neighborhood in which they were working, Hicks
and Jones created alternative literacies in their after school program. In
few of these examples did teachers invoke explicitly political motivations;
in none did the curriculum formally politicize the work of the school. Yet
perhaps, while some may find these efforts incomplete, there are lessons
in many schools about ways in which quiet resistance is working on
behalf of children.
RETHINKING A PEDAGOGY OF CLASS. Yet quiet resistance cannot ultimately

be enough, and we must continue to press our understanding of what a
pedagogy of class might involve. Beach and his colleagues reference the
work of scholars such as Renny Christopher (1999) or Sherry L. Linkon
(1999) who have begun to write to broader audiences about working-
class pedagogy. Ironically, this work is being done mainly in the college
classroom, where relatively few poor and working-class students will
ever be found.
Introduction 11
This work is complicated in part by our confused discourse about

class. Unlike race, ethnicity, and gender, Lawrence MacKenzie (1998)
posits, class identity is often not considered to contribute to cultural plu-
ralism. Why? Because non-middle class identity is supposed to be invis-
ible; it is viewed not as a cross-cultural asset but a condition to be
repaired (p. 103, italics in original).
He elaborates: From what Ive seen, life for many poor and working
class students is erosively perplexed by the clinging, deep-rooted sugges-
tion that their class identity is a badge of cognitive failure, an identity that
an individual of sufficient merit can and should leave behindand that
ones parents, if clever and enterprising enough, and unless theyre first-
generation immigrants, should have already left behind. The message is
this: Working class students must remediate their identities, and most of
them will receive little or no respect until they do (p. 100).
Arguing instead for a pegagogy of respect, MacKenzie admonishes
educators to move beyond conventional approaches to multicultural cur-
riculum, to move beyond required reading on race, class, and gender to
think about what might be learned from the groundskeepers at work out-
side the . . . window, the electrician remodeling the librarys lighting, the
heating engineers. . . . (MacKenzie, 1998) and the relationships between all
of these and the professional staff of schools. In the very halls of educational
institutions, he argues, are the seeds of powerful lessons on class hierarchies.
Challenges to imagining a more deliberate pedagogy of class clearly
remain, and resolving them is beyond the scope of this volume. Yet the
lives of the young people in these chapters illuminate many of these chal-
lenges. Students who might once might have grown up understanding the
inherently contradictory interests of bosses and workers from the arti-
facts of their parents union involvement, now have little or no access to
discourse about worker interests. Public deliberation about the need for
higher academic standards is disconnected from labor market data that
predicts that most students will face low-wage work involving only min-
imum cognitive skills. The tensions inherent in making success in school
contingent upon assuming an identity that distances oneself from family
and community, make it clear that broader conceptualizations of acade-
mic achievement are necessary.
We imagine a pedagogy of class that will be created not by middle-
class academics, but with members of the community who can name the
in between-ness of the upwardly mobile. We envision work by com-
munity advocates who can envision alternative routes to mobility that
sometimes challenge the structures of school, and sometimes sidestep
school altogether. Cultural brokers with one foot firmly in the commu-
nity and the other working with and beside the school may someday
make the rules of success more clear and more subject to critical scrutiny.
Someday, middle-class students may understand that becoming educated

obligates one to examine ones own privilege.
And, we believe, a pedagogy of class may well also contain the
lessons of thousands of committed and caring teachers who have long
served students well.
Carrying the Project Forward

As weve compiled this volume, we found ourselves asking ever more
questions about the scholarly work that remains to be done at the inter-
sections of social class and schooling. As we considered the next steps, we
were reminded of Betties accounts of high school girls imagining only
limited futures for ourselves, as we realized that the imagination of even
middle-class scholars can be limited by the contexts of work and of our
lives. We will work in these final pages to stretch our imaginations, in
part to imagine decentering our status as middle-class intellectuals as we
wonder about ways to move forward.
First, we want to imagine multiple ways of capturing the life trajec-
tories of young people from all economic backgrounds. While weve
learned much from reading and rereading these works, we fully realize
the limitations of point-in-time studies such as these for understanding
class dynamics. Given what we know about the complex intertwining of
K12 schooling, higher education, labor markets, idiosyncratic circum-
stances, and structural obstacles to mobility, we find ourselves wanting to
look far beyond the end of the book to see how things turned out for the
young people whose lives are represented here. We want to know where
their lives have taken them, and we want especially to know what they
will come to understand about the many possible permutations of turn-
ing out well. But such is not the nature of educational research, that we
can place ourselves in the position of chronicling life trajectories. We be-
lieve that if we are to understand social class, we need research that fol-
lows young people through the milestones of their lives. Examples such as
Michael Aptedss series of 7 and Up films, or Lois Weiss (2004) pro-
ject revisiting students in young adulthood that she first interviewed
when they were in high school, suggest the richness that were missing in
our more limited conceptualizations of educational research.
Second, we continue to try to imagine schooling in which class strati-
fication is named but not reproduced. How do we imagine the possibilities
of poor and working-class pedagogy, in which class is finally named and
analyzed? How do we conceive of education in which poor, working-
class, and more privileged students all come to better understand how so-
cial class has been at very core of their imaginations of who they might be
and become? We believe that these questions can only be addressed by
Introduction 13
scholarly work done in collaboration with public schoolteachers, and with

parents and community activists who serve as advocates for young people.
We need to better understand what schools are now doing beneath the
radar, whether as quiet resistance or as explicit practice, which disrupts
the day-to-day work of schooling. We encourage our colleagues to imag-
ine ways in which such scholarly partnerships might be realized.
Finally, we want to imagine how our work might become part of a
project in which class is named in broader social settings. What would
studies look like that foregrounded class, and from there, went on to con-
siderations of gender, sexuality, and ethnicity? Or, as Noblit so cogently
argues, might we start with either race or gender (or disability or sex-
uality) and then eventually come to the place where the oppressions of
class can be seen and named? Drawing from critical race theory, what
might we learn about educating young people for the political work of
coalition building and local activism? What if our work went beyond
analyses of the schools to projects of social change?
We trust that this volume is a beginning.
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PART 1
GETTING TO CLASS
We came up with the title Late to Class on a walk through downtown

Seattle with Bill Johnston. We liked it because of its double entrendre. We
are both late in coming to a different understanding of social class and
late in rethinking education in terms of social class. We also liked the title
because it signaled a small transgression (in school and in social thought).
We will likely be disciplined by the adherents of various theoretical
schools of thought. Much like the student coming to class latewe ex-
pect some public reprimand and sanctioning as well. Nevertheless, the
volume achieves more than we could have hoped on that long walk in
Seattle. We are late to class and potentially in a liminal space where the
authors in this volume reveal our assumptions and try to think much
more clearly about social class and education.
The interconnections between the chapters are multiple, complex,
and contested. This volume opens up our contestations about class even
as it provides a rich base for future thought and action around social class
and education. We decided to organize the text so that the reader was
first faced with the juxtaposition of how we understand class.
On the one hand, class is lived experience and on the other hand, a
history of ideas that people and states use to understand themselves. This
opening section gets us to class in these two different ways. It also gets
us to class in two of the competing views about social class: as warranted
social theory and as narrative. Beth Hatt grounds class in a narrative of
her life. For her, narrative is both a powerful way to unpack the dynam-
ics of social class and education and a pedagogy she is employing for ed-
ucated people. William Johnston was one of the trio that designed this
volume. His ideas about class have informed ours in many ways. In his
chapter, Bill gets us to class by examining the history of ideas about class
that now exists as both implicit and explicit theories about the nature of
social class, stratification, and identity. Together these chapters give us a
basis to rethink how class works.
17
1
GROWING UP AS POOR, WHITE TRASH
STORIES OF WHERE I COME FROM
Beth Hatt
The idea of poor, white trash conjures many different images in peo-
ples minds. For some, they think of raggedy clothes, bad teeth, and dirty
hair. People also picture trailers and roaches crawling across kitchen
counters. A final assumption would probably be that they have no edu-
cation. For me, I think of my family, of people I care deeply about. I
think about where I come from.
I would like to think that the following narrative about my own life
is part of an education of educated people. Literature concerning the
working class has taught us a lot about working-class culture, gender, and
race construction within the working class, and about schooling within
working class life. However, I am hesitant to think that it has personalized
the working-class beyond the stereotype. It has not typically made the
issue of growing up poor a personal one or as something urgently needing
to be eradicated. Furthermore, the focus of critique has often stayed upon
the working class rather than highlighting the destruction caused by hege-
monic middle-class culture joined with capitalist ideals.
In this chapter I will provide a personal narrative of rural, white
working-class life and the people who live it. It will be grounded in
Dorothy Smiths (1990) perspective of the feminist sociology of knowl-
edge. She claims that within academia we, as women, are forced to work
under the dominance of the father tongue, which was constructed
through years of the disciplines being dominated by men. The father
tongue is characterized by impersonal and objectified relations with the
right to speak for others, whom Smith specifically identifies as women.
19
20 Beth Hatt
This is particularly applicable to dominant notions of what is appropriate

academic writing and rhetoric, which often distances itself from the emo-
tional and relational aspects of the writers life as well as those with whom
we conduct research.
Smiths work could be expanded to include notions of whiteness and
elitism as being part of the father tongue. Intellectual, political, and cul-
tural worlds are not only structured through patriarchy but also through
notions of white racial superiority and economic elitism. These worlds
are dominated by men but are also very white and wealthy spaces and
ways of being. We need to work against, and move beyond, the father
tongue in order to allow greater, more diverse participation in various
spaces such as the intellectual and political. For these reasons, I purpose-
fully aim for my writing to be personal and reflective in opposition to a
very formal or overly academic style.
Before beginning my narrative, I must first make some concessions.
This is my story rather than our story. To clarify, I fully realize that
I cannot speak for all of the rural, working class. Additionally, I cannot
say our story because I left. I no longer live in the same small town nor
live the same life. Instead, I see myself as being somewhere in between
Karl Marxs categories of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. I have
wined and dined too much to be considered a proletariat, yet my work-
ing-class roots and identification keep me from being completely accepted
and comfortable with/by the bourgeoisie. It makes my identity a bit schiz-
ophrenic. Also, I am torn between romanticizing the white working-class
way of life while also being aware of the bigotry that is often included.
Finally, I do not want my narrative to be read as a success story nor
as a story of hardship. I do not define it as a success story because suc-
cess to me is about much more than schooling. I do not see it as a story
of hardship because mixed in with the story is my privilege in being
white. Additionally, I am well aware of the fact that I did not grow up as
poor as many other people. I know that many children have struggled
much more than I ever have or will. What I hope my story does, is shift
how we think about class, people who are poor or working class, and
the lived experience of class.
(De)Valued Knowledge
My environment growing up included blue-collar parents, a single-
parent household, limited adult supervision, and a low-level family
income. I believe my family background provided me with a unique per-
spective from that of many people in academia. Also, it enabled me to be
aware of some of the ways in which financial and educational power can
be used to oppress the working class.
Growing Up as Poor, White Trash 21
Growing up, our food came from either the garden or from my
fathers hunting trips. We never ate beef. Instead we had deer, squirrel,
and rabbit that my father hunted himself, not to mention, rocky moun-
tain oysters (i.e., pig testicles) fresh from my grandpas hog farm. My dad
taught me a lot about nature. When accompanying him on hunting trips,
I learned how to look at deer tracks in the sand and know whether it was
made by a doe or a buck. I also learned how to recognize deer paths, skin
a squirrel, and look for mussels in the river.
Some other lessons I learned included the importance of the value of
family. Rarely do people in my community move outside of the county.
Even those who move away to attend college often choose to stay and
work in a factory rather than move away to begin a career in their field of
study. In fact at one point in time, a large portion of my family all lived
on the same road. I have also observed my aunts and father take care
of my grandmother by cooking, cleaning, and driving her to her appoint-
ments. My decision to move away to attend graduate school was difficult
for my family to understand I since had been taught to value home
and community.
Learning to Labor
My mother has worked in a glass factory for the past fifteen years, while
my father has worked for the past twenty-eight years in a millwright fac-
tory. I began working in the eighth grade busing tables at a local cafete-
ria and continued to work in food service until I entered college. Being
from a small town, I was often serving food and cleaning up after my fel-
low, wealthier classmates and their families. A few years ago, I ran into
an old classmate of mine whose father was the town doctor. He told me
that while in college he had to work fifteen to twenty hours a week.
He then proceeded to tell me that he would think of me. His family
were regulars at the cafeteria where I bussed tables from the time I was thir-
teen to fifteen years old. To keep going, he would say to himself, If Beth
could manage working in middle school and high school, then surely I can
do this [too]. His romanticization of my hard work denies the differ-
ent material realities that he and I operated under as classmates. It denies
the inequities inherent within our different material realities and makes
them appear normal. This romanticization toward the working-class
way of life glosses over the real-life struggles of making enough money to
have food to eat, worrying about a lack of medical coverage, being forced
to work under dangerous conditions, and lacking job security.
My family has experienced literal pain for their labors. Two years
ago, my mother mangled her hand in a piece of machinery and will never
regain full use of it. Her employer forced her to return to work two days
22 Beth Hatt
later to avoid increasing their accidental rate of injury. My father broke

his leg while working and has a hole in his foot, while my older brother is
missing a thumb as a result of an accident in a furniture factory. Just in
this past year, my sister broke her kneecap and femur while working at a
puppy day care and will never regain full mobility in her knee. If mur-
der was redefined as deaths due to poor working conditions, the num-
ber would be significantly more than the amount of traditional murders.
In 1990, 2.4 times more people were killed in the workplace due to pur-
poseful violations of the law than were murdered at home or in the street
(Lynch, Michalowski, and Groves, 2000).
Gender also plays a large role in being working class, particularly
when most of the available high-paying jobs involve physical labor. Time
and time again I have witnessed the women in my family stuck in mis-
erable marriages due to financial dependence and husbands who abused
this economical power they had over their wives. My parents divorced
when I was ten years old and my mother was devastated emotionally and
economically. Good paying work was hard to find, food was scarce, and
I remember searching harvested cornfields for leftover corn to sell for
cash, which was then used to buy groceries.
I also remember my mother going through trash dumpsters to see
what treasures others had thrown away. In fact, my most favorite child-
hood stuffed animal, a sheep dog I named Snuffy, came from a Dump-
ster. Those times gave me strength and determination that I dont think I
would have had otherwise. I swore I would never be financially depen-
dent upon a man and I perceived education as my way out. Acquiring an
education became an act of independence and would ensure my future
children that they would never want for their basic needs.
(Mis)education
It wasnt until I entered school that I remember being treated differently
due to my social class and being ashamed for the first time. One of my
best friends through grade school was Nicole. Nicole entered kinder-
garten knowing how to read. Everyday she was taken to the special
room to receive advanced instruction in reading. In an effort for us to
stay side-by-side, Nicole told the teacher that I could also read. The
teacher believed her and the next day I went to the special room with
Nicole. Of course, I could not read. Despite Nicoles efforts at whispering
the words in my ear, the specialist was not fooled and I never went back
to the special room with Nicole again.
Then there were the spelling bees. I really wanted to win! But every
year, kindergarten through the fifth grade, it always came down to Nicole
and me and she always came out ahead. She cried along with me when I
lost. Her mother forced her to study for the spelling bees while my efforts
were more self-motivated. I envied Nicole for her mothers attention, but
Nicole resented it.
Her mother was a kindergarten teacher and her father worked at
the local power plantfor a white, working-class town, they were the
upper class. Nicole had the hippest clothes, always received compli-
ments from teachers, and had a swimming pool, which was the sign of
wealth in my community.
I have a distinct memory of standing in line beside Nicole during grade
school as a teacher complimented her on a new outfit. I looked at Nicoles
new, neatly pressed clothes and compared them to my worn-out shoes and
hand-me-down blue jeans while feeling ashamed. It was one of the first
times I realized that my family was not necessarily poor (depending on
your point of view) but that I was without. A large part of my memories
connected to schooling are about feeling shameembarrassment of being
without, of being ugly. At one point in time, I even got lice and to this day
still vividly remember the names I was called. I had been marked with the
true stamp of being poor, white trashI had gotten lice.
Throughout my schooling, success was typically narrowly defined to
mean educational achievement. At times, I have struggled with the question,
If education equals success, then are my parents and brother failures be-
cause they do not have a formal education? Also, throughout college I en-
countered numerous downcast faces and eyes accompanied by silence when
I answered the question, What do your parents do for a living? When I re-
ceive this reaction, I think about when I worked with my mother in her fac-
tory. I saw her pass out due to working in extreme heat without any breaks
and forced to work at the fastest pace possible. I also think about how she
worked a swing shift (i.e., a weekly shift from days to evenings to mid-
nights) for many years and I have seen the toll it has taken on her. My
mother works much harder than I ever have in undergraduate or graduate
school. I want to look at the people asking those questions and tell them
these this. But this is a voice that has been silenced by educated people be-
cause of the higher esteem placed on educational credentials than working-
class experience or knowledge. I continue to struggle with understanding
how much value should be given to educational credentials because I have
chosen to be a part of the institution of education.
Finally, my working-class roots taught me that no matter how many
degrees a person has after their name, they do not automatically deserve
your respect. In my community, posturing resulted in isolation rather than
admiration. I was taught that you earn respect by being humble rather than
by reminding people how great you are. Thats your familys job. The rules
in academia are quite different. We are often implicitly and explicitly
taught that acquiring an education entitles respect from others, or rather
from those without an education. This still confuses meespecially since
being humble can be so much harder than acquiring an education.
24 Beth Hatt
Race and Class

A part of white, working-class, rural culture is a careful construction of
an us versus them dichotomy. The category of them can include peo-
ple who are not white, academics, people who live outside the county,
and people from the city. The most deeply embedded construction is that
of people of color. Growing up, my community was 99 percent white ex-
cept for the only doctor in the county and his family, who were Filipino-
Canadian. I used to argue with my grandmother for saying negative
things about African-Americans and with my mothers racist comments
always framed by a fear of African-Americans. Through my own reason-
ing, I had concluded that skin color was not enough of a reason to judge
a person, but that was the limit to the depth of my understanding. At that
point in time, my ideology was that everyone should be color-blind
when it came to race.
While a freshman in college, I decided to take African-American Liter-
ature. Little did I know how it would change my life. Within the classes, for
the first time I was a racial minority. We read works by W. E. B. Dubois,
Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, and
Malcolm X. I heard a discourse that contradicted my life. I learned the his-
tory of racial bigotry in the United States that had been omitted from my
previous education. My K12 schooling had not even included the com-
mon surface level attempt at celebrating diversity through the Martin
Luther King Jr. holiday.
Not until years later was I confronted with the reality of a middle
class that was not 100 percent white. How was I to fit this into my
schema of seeing all people of color as having suffered more than myself?
How was I to make sense of the notion that all white people had more
privileges than people of color when meeting a person of color who grew
up with parents that were physicians? Due to growing up in a white,
working-class family, I believed that all someone needed in order to have
an easy life was money. It was then that I began to understand white priv-
ilege. I had previously connected my privilege with economic capital
not with the actual color of my skin. Through this realization, I began to
understand that I was privileged just by simply being white.
My first academic job was in my home state of Indiana. Going home,
however, was a very different experience. I had married a Mexican man
and had a beautiful baby girl. So going home meant experiencing lessons
in white oppression. Suddenly, a world that once seemed so familiar had
become strange by seeing things that the presence of my husband and
daughter brought into view. I especially became aware of the assumptions
embedded in white privilege. For example, despite my husbands impecca-
ble English laced with a Southern drawl, many people from my commu-
nity assumed that he still needed to learn English. My biracial marriage al-
lowed me to be aware of the practice of racial oppression where previ-
ously it had been blind to my white (blue) eyes. While standing beside
my husband, I saw us being ignored by sales clerks in stores, and felt the
constant gaze upon us as we walked through the mall.1
I may have grown up working class, but I also grew up with privi-
leges in speaking English, largely experiencing cultural continuity be-
tween home and school, and always having authority (teachers, bosses,
professors, etc.) figures who looked similar to me. I had lived most of my
life without having to think about my race and how it influenced the
ways in which people perceived me and the numerous spaces it allowed
me to occupy.
Turning Points
At times Ive wondered how I managed to get to college and then through
graduate school. Consequently, I decided to write about the turning
points, which had a strong influence on my education. As I think about
these turning points, I want to be clear that it was never about hard work.
It was about being provided with opportunities and being connected with
people who had cultural and financial capital. When youre poor, you
can work as hard as you want, but if someone doesnt provide a bridge so
that you can cross the gulf of poverty, then it doesnt matter.
Figuring out how to get to college was difficult for me because I
didnt have anyone who could guide me. The bottom line was money. I
didnt have the money for application fees and knew that if I didnt get fi-
nancial aid, that I couldnt go at all. I only applied to two schools because
that was what I could afford. I remember that I really wanted to go to
Cornell University but the application fee was fifty dollars and there was
no way I could come up with the money. It wasnt until years later that
that I learned I could have had those fees waived.
The summer before my junior year of high school, I participated in
an eight-week summer science program at Indiana University for eco-
nomically disadvantaged youths. Through this program, I was able to
get a glimpse of college life and began to believe that I was capable of
doing college level work. I also became connected with a faculty member
who had a huge impact on my life. I ended up attending Indiana Univer-
sity. That faculty member got me into the honors program, and talked to
me about applying to graduate school. Without her intervention in my
life, I most definitely would not be writing this chapter. The summer sci-
ence program ended two years after I had participated due to federal
funding cuts.
26 Beth Hatt
To pay for college, I was fortunate enough to receive a Pell Grant, a

grant from the state of Indiana, Perkins loans, Stafford loans, and a schol-
arship. Without these forms of financial aid, I simply would not have
been able to go to college. I personally feel a sense of desperation when I
hear about decisions made by President Bush to cut or reduce funding for
programs such as the Perkins Loan Program, the Perkins Vocational and
Technical Education Program, LEAP, Upward Bound, Talent Search, and
Gear Up, which are all programs targeting low-income and/or disadvan-
taged youths (Selingo and Brush, 2005). Simultaneously, the state has
been cutting funding to state universities (Digest of Education Statistics,
2002). To maintain financial stability, many universities have responded
by raising tuition (Choy, 1999). Consequently, costs for attending college
are steadily increasing while opportunities for financial assistance are
quickly declining. There are becoming fewer and fewer bridges to help
low-income students attend college. As bell hooks (2000) states, Our
nation is fast becoming a class segregated society where the plight of the
poor is forgotten and the greed of the rich is morally tolerated and con-
doned (p. vii). We have to pay attention to what is happening and focus
on building up rather than tearing down those bridges.
Graduate school was also a whole new world for me. I was amazed
at how often others assumed that I had money to pay for tuition when
the financial aid office was late (as always) in paying. For example, I have
a distinct memory of talking with someone in the university cashiers of-
fice about my financial aid being late. The person could not seem to un-
derstand why I could not just pay $5,000 and then get reimbursed later
when I would receive financial aid. In fact, I was going to be forced to
withdraw if I did not pay that $5,000. My mother cashed in part of her
retirement so that I would not have to drop out.
I was also amazed at how often I heard other graduate students talk
about being poor or not having any money. At first, it made me feel as
if I wasnt the only one. But then through conversations with many of
those students, I discovered that being poor for them meant having less
than $500 in their checking accounts or if they did run out of money,
they had family that could back them up. It was clear that many of the
students had no clue what it meant to be poor.
Thankfully, I had a graduate adviser who understood my dilemma.
He came from a working-class background himself and never forgot
where he came from. Even though it wasnt required, he went out of his
way to help us get by. A large part of his energy went to securing fund-
ing for graduate students. Additionally, he was not stingy with the fund-
ing like some other faculty. He not only paid us well, but also ensured
that we had funding to travel to conferences. If he would not have been
sensitive to those issues and would not have been willing to work with
me during times of financial desperation, I would not have finished grad-

uate school. Finally, he helped me and many others to understand how to
maintain who we are against the pressure to conform to the rules of
the academy.
Conclusion
I still struggle with meshing my working-class values of humility, family,
and home with my lifestyle as a professor. When I visit my family, a part
of me still longs to return. Although my income potential has been greatly
enhanced, I wonder if it is worth it. I feel as if I am taking for granted
what really matters in life: our relationships with othersmy sense of
community and family. By societys definition, I am successful, but in my
heart I wonder if by investing myself in social mobility through schooling,
if I have lost more than I have gained.
I now find myself more comfortable in academic spaces than in my
home community. I sense that I have become an outsider through my
class mobility and by seeing issues of race and gender differently than
most people in my community now. How can I claim a working-class
identity when I drive an SUV and dont have to punch a time clock? My
work is rarely seen as work by my family due to the fact that I dont have
someone controlling my time and that my job does not involve physical
labor. My family doesnt know how to ask about my work or how to
make sense of it, particularly since it is grounded in working toward
racial, class, and gender equity. My mother regularly chastises me for not
having a clean housethe sign of a good woman in her eyes. To me,
however, my priorities have changed and I interpret her ideas of good
women and housework quite differently now. Dont get me wrong,
my family is proud of me. There is just more of a disconnect now from
simply moving away to also rethinking much of my previous socializa-
tion. Additionally, I can listen but can no longer really share in their sto-
ries of struggle.
Whenever I get discouraged about my job, I remember my family. I
remind myself of the struggles many of them have overcome and many
that they still face. I remind myself of what I am taking for granted. I then
remember that one of my main purposes in getting a Ph.D. was to give
back to my family. I never want to lose sight of the fact that getting my
doctorate was about becoming a bridge for my family. When a family
member cannot pay their medical bills due to a lack of insurance, I want
to be able to help them out. When my niece is ready to go to college, I
want to ensure that she is able to go. I also want to be a bridge for the
many first-generation college students I come across as well. It is what
provides the meaning for my work.
28 Beth Hatt
I would like to end with a quote by bell hooks that I present as a chal-
lenge to those of us in academia. She states: To see the poor as ourselves
we must want for the poor what we want for ourselves. By living simply,
we all express our solidarity with the poor and our recognition that glut-
tonous consumption must end. . . . Solidarity with the poor is the only
path that can lead our nation back to a vision of community that can ef-
fectively challenge and eliminate violence and exploitation. It invites us to
embrace an ethics of compassion and sharing. . . . (2000, pp. 4849).
The idea of solidarity with the poor is a complicated issue. We need
to think through how the aim to own more and become wealthier repro-
duces class stratification and justifies the assault on the poor in our soci-
ety. How do we justify to ourselves having more than our neighbors?
Through wanting more for ourselves, how are we keeping others back?
We must make this struggle our own by asking these questions. To
achieve solidarity with the poor, we must make sacrifices ourselves and
truly embrace an ethics of compassion and sharing.
Note
1. I am referring here to instances such as looking for apartments or com-
plaining of poor treatment in businesses.
References
Chow, S. 1999. College access and affordability. Education Statistics Quarterly,
1(2). Retrieved May 2, 2005, from http://www.nces.ed.gov/programs/
quarterly.
hooks, b. 2000. Where we stand: Class matters. New York: Routledge.
Lynch, M., Michalowki, R., and Groves, W. B. 2000. The new primer in radical
criminology: Critical perspectives on crime, power, and identity, 3rd ed. Monsey,
NY: Criminal Justice Press.
National Center for Education Statistics, Digest of Education Statistics 2002,
Table 330. Retrieved May 2, 2005, from http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/Annual
Reports/reports.asp?type=digest.
Selingo, J. and Brush, S. 2005. Bush takes aim at student aid and research. Chron-
icle of Higher Education, 51(24), p. A1.
Smith, D. 1987. The everyday world as problematic: A feminist sociology.
Boston: Northeastern University Press.
2
CLASS/CULTURE/ACTION
REPRESENTATION, IDENTITY, AND AGENCY IN
EDUCATIONAL ANALYSIS
Bill J. Johnston
Introduction
This chapter attempts to explore whether and in what manner the con-
struct class remains a useful category for social and educational analysis. At
one time class was unabashedly identified as one of, if not the central, cat-
egory of sociological analysis. This is not to suggest, however, that the class
construct has ever been unproblematically embraced. Karl Marx is proba-
bly identified as the first great class theorist, but never unambiguously de-
fined class (Crompton, 1998). Max Weber spent much of his professional
career engaged in a debate with Marxs ghost over matters of class and so-
cial theory. A variety of theorists throughout the twentieth century have at-
tempted to clarify, elaborate, or modify the original conceptions of class
offered by Marx and Weber. Likewise, over the years there have been re-
peated declarations of the demise of class and/or class theory, just as others
have lamented the imprecision, impurity, or simple neglect of class analysis
(Eder, 1993; Pahl, 1993; Pakulski and Waters, 1996).
More recently, economic restructuring associated with processes of
postindustrial and post-Fordist forms of production, transformation of
the occupational structure, the triumph of global capitalism, and the dis-
solution of the former Soviet Union, has led to renewed questioning of
the continued utility of class theory, and by implication, the utility of
class analysis.
29
30 Bill J. Johnston
There are two primary reasons why we should examine the effects of
class on education: one empirical and the other theoretical. First, as Steven
E. Tozer, Paul Violas, and Guy Senese (2000) points out in his brief discus-
sion of class, family background is closely associated with educational at-
tainment. He notes, for example, that compared to White non-Hispanics,
Asian Americans drop out of school somewhat less, African Americans
drop out slightly more, and Hispanic students drop out twice as often as the
White comparison group. Girls drop out slightly less than boys. Taking all
ethnic groups and genders, low-SES students drop out six times as often as
high SES students and almost three times as often as middle-SES students
(p. 154, italics in original). Other studies of educational attainment obtain
similar findings. To report attainment differences by race/ethnicity and gen-
der, but not by SES, is at best to misrepresent the nature of the educational
challenge. Moreover, given the history of class antagonism, to employ the
language of class, or its cousin SES, is to invoke a social memory of work-
ing-class repression carried out by, or with the nodding approval of, the
state. And to implicate the state in such a manner is to both threaten the
legitimacy of the state and to highlight relationships of interdependency be-
tween the economic and political order. From the statist perspective, far bet-
ter to invoke the legacy of Parsonian structural-functionalism, with its
assumptions of meritocracy, order, and stability, to attribute school failure
to the inadequacy of family or student, and to dismiss conflict as an event
of individual deviance rather than as a structural problem. From a critical
perspective, on the other hand, to ignore class and/or SES in analysis serves
little purpose other than to mystify hegemonic relations and to protect the
privilege of the privileged.
Second, Raymond E. Callahan in Education and the Cult of Efficiency
(1962) traced the general adoption of business interests and values in edu-
cation since 1900; a tendency reinforced during the past two decades be-
ginning with the publication of A Nation at Risk (1983). The contribution
of education to the labor force and to general economic development is
now so taken for granted that it has become the primary focus of policy
discussion, often to the exclusion of other interests. The tendency to ex-
clude class from an analysis of education, however, deflects attention from
the economic correlates of achievement, and more importantly relation-
ships of domination and subordination relative to production and con-
sumption. In a decidedly peculiar twist of logic we are left to engage in an
analysis of an institution being defined and judged in terms of its contribu-
tion to economic production without recourse to a core construct by which
to characterize economic relationships and potential conflicts.
Thus, we undertake a review of the construct of class, with the inten-
tion of exploring whether and how educators might more productively
conceptualize social class. We conclude that while the class construct need
Class/Culture/Action 31
not be abandoned, it may require reconceptualization. Consequently, we

explore more culturally derived and emergent notions of class. As a com-
ponent of identity formation, components of class such as economic status,
conditions, and relationships remains important, but how to productively
and analytically join class with analysis of other factors (primarily race and
gender, but also sexuality, religion, disability, etc.) remains problematic, es-
pecially if ones interest is to engage in the analysis of collective action and
policy formation for school improvement and individual achievement.
Moreover, while class theory and class analysis may continue to have sig-
nificant implications for general social theory development and institu-
tional analysis, it may be that at the level of the school and classroom in
which educators, who themselves occupy class positions, attempt to
counter the potentially negative effects of class among their students, that
different emphasis and understanding of class may be warranted.
Conceptualizing Class:
The Founding Fathers: Marx and Engels
For good reason Marx and Weber are considered to be the founding fa-
thers of class analysis; the discussion of class throughout the twentieth
century has primarily revolved around the competing formulations of
class first advanced by Marx and then by Weber.
Karl Marx (18181883)

Marx and Engels, coauthors of The Manifesto of the Communist Party
(1848), were clearly heirs to an established tradition in which the concept
of class and the analytic division of society into class and status groups was
already established, and in which there was precedent, albeit in a rudimen-
tary form, of attempts to understand and influence the development of civil
society. They were not alone in recognizing that in nineteenth-century
France and England, the rise of industry was creating a new binary oppo-
sition between workers and propertied interests. Marx was the first, how-
ever to make class a central component of social theory.
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class

struggle. . . . The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the
ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has
but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms
of struggle in place of the old ones.
Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie possesses, however, this dis-
tinctive feature: it has simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a whole
is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great
32 Bill J. Johnston
classes directly facing each other: bourgeoisie and proletariat. (Marx and
Engels, 1848/1976, p. 485)
In this formulation we find the seeds of reconceptualization of class
from a hierarchy of status positions to a binary opposition. We have the
basis of class theory as the essential dynamic explanation of social struc-
ture and change. And we have the privileging of economic relationships,
relative to the social and political, as determinant (at least in the last in-
stance). The basis of the great antagonism is identified as possession of
the means of production that allows the bourgeoisie to exercise domina-
tion over the laboring class. While ownership was the ultimate basis of
economic authority, social relations of domination and subordination
was the defining characteristic. And in this we find a clear attempt to as-
sociate class with analytic positions (rather than as attributes of persons);
positions that are knowable, and that can exist, only in relationship to
other positions.
For Marx, relationships of production are of primary significance.
Within a capitalist form of production, ownership of productive forces
are critical and give rise to the necessity of exploitation of labor power
as opposed to the mere exploitation of labor. Labor may be thought of as
a commodity, which has a use value and price that will be determined
through market forces and exchange. A worker may exchange labor for a
wage, the value of which will be determined by more or less unencum-
bered market mechanisms. There is little inherent exploitation in such a
market exchange; indeed workers may receive full and fair market value
for their labor. The capitalist, however, obtains not just labor, but also
labor power; the productive force that maintains and multiples capital it-
self, and without which capitalist forms of production could not be sus-
tained. The application of labor power leads to the creation of surplus
labor that may be appropriated to generate surplus value. The essence of
the class relationship, and the nature of capitalist exploitation, is not
found in the market exchange of labor for wages (which is ultimately a
relationship between persons), but in the abstract, yet real, structural cou-
pling of capital with labor power during the process of production. What
happens to surplus value once it is transformed by exchange into money
is of considerable social interest but remains distinct from the theoretical
issue of capitalist forms of exploitation. From a Marxist perspective then,
class position, associated with ownership of the means of production, or
lack thereof, becomes a primary analytic construct and the central dy-
namic of history.
The structure of economic relationships is thought to be assessable
and objectively determined through analysis. Thus, one may presume that
material conditions potentially may determine consciousness and ulti-
mately social movements, but the logic of class theory is not dependent
upon the existence of class consciousness and action as a class for itself. It
appears then that the potential for disconnection between the analysis of
class relationships and the application of class theory, on the one hand,
from the development of class consciousness and social action, on the
other hand, has created an enduring tension. One is not entirely remiss to
ask, however, what good is a theory of historical change and development
if it does not lead to observable conscious social action. On the other
hand, to the degree that class relationships are a fundamental component
of capitalist structures and forms of production, then class theory and
analysis serves the important function of making visible, and perhaps de-
mystifying, forces that are often mediated and obscured by market rela-
tionships. Such knowledge as may be gained from class analysis may not
set one free, but its absence is certainly no contribution to emancipation.
The analysis of class (treated as an analytic construct) within capital-
ist forms of production is thought to allow the determination of objective
class interests that may be independent of the subjective perception or
consciousness of class; in part, this relates to Marxs distinction between
a class in itself and a class for itself. Now if one is concerned only with
class positions, then it probably doesnt matter a great deal whether the
relationship is one of exploitation or not. But the fact of the matter is that
both class and occupational positions are filled by people, thus identifi-
cation of structural forms of exploitation and the inevitable inequalities
of income and opportunity associated with relationships of production,
have significant social consequence. This point is made forcefully by
Maurice Zeitlin (1980, pp. 23) who notes that no adequate social theory
(as may have happened with some variants of structuralist Marxism) can
focus only on structures, and that social actors are never merely effects of
determinate structural factors. In a dialectical fashion, Men and women
make the social relations and material conditions of life that make them
(p. 3). Class relationships thus always contain a latent historical con-
tent, grounded in the material conditions of production and conditioned
by forces of contradiction and exploitation. Whether persons occupying
particular class positions become conscious of the nature of exploitative
relations and act in ways consistent with self-interest is a question of his-
torically contingency. For example, Marxs expectation that the prole-
tariat would eventually rise in opposition to their exploitation, appears to
have been merely wishful thinking.
Max Weber (18641920)

In contrast to Marxs assertion that the relations of production are the real
foundation of society, Weber considered economic power to be only one
available form. Weber notes that one may identify class situation as an
34 Bill J. Johnston
analytic construct; status groups, which tend to be actual social groups;

and parties that are affiliations of individuals for the purpose of acquiring
social power.
Weber associated class with life chances and with the acquisition of
goods and income, governed by principles of market exchange. It is the
exchange relationship rather than the production relationship that is the
primary defining characteristic. Persons who share a common market
situation may also be considered as belonging in the same class situation.
Clusters of (economic-based) classes within which mobility is relatively
easy, may be described as social classes. In this formulation, class re-
mains a potentially relational construct, but is revealed much more per-
sonally and hierarchically. Because Weber was not bound to a binary
understanding of exploiting and exploited classes, he was able to allow
the possibility that a variety of class positions might be identified. As An-
thony Giddens (1971, p. 164) points out, however, Weber, following
Marx, privileges ownership/nonownership as the primary basis of his-
torically significant social class division within competitive markets.
Weber identifies four primary social classes: dominant entrepreneurial
and propertied groups; propertyless white-collar workers, technicians
and intelligentsia; petty bourgeoisie; and the working class internally dif-
ferentiated by skill level (p. 165).
Having positioned class as one among other sources of influence,
Weber also is free to identify multiple dynamics governing social action
and historically contingent change. During periods of economic or tech-
nological transformation, for example, class may be determinate, where-
as during periods of relative social stability status may predominate
(Crompton and Gubbay, 1977, p. 7). Moreover, associating class with
consumption and exchange, then class identification becomes a task of
differentiating various life chances, incomes, and goods acquisition along
a continuum. Class identification requires empirical description rather
than theoretical explication; in practical terms class identification
becomes reduced to a process of occupational grouping associated with
status hierarchies.
Neither Marx nor Weber engaged in a thorough and explicit discus-
sion of class as such. Rosemary Crompton and Jon Gubbay (1977, p. 5)
note, for example, that Weber develops the concept of class in only two
brief passages, whereas Marx is described as never having provided a pre-
cise definition (Crompton, 1998, p. 26). Consequently, much subsequent
theoretical work has been an attempt to more adequately conceptualize
and describe class. What is clear, however, is that both Marx and Weber
are positioning class within the context of developing a broader theory of
society and that they privilege different social forces and dynamics.
The Competing Logic of Industrial Society

and the New Middle Class
In the United States of 1900, Marxs account of the labor process in fac-
tory-based production and the general critique of capitalism was the most
advanced theoretical statement available. Nevertheless, while Marxism
may have offered a potent explanation of emerging social dynamics, it
did not achieve widespread acceptance. There are a variety of reasons for
this. First there were a number of competing general social theories. Be-
cause Marxs theory was clearly inhospitable to those interested in fur-
thering capitalist development, one should not be surprised that it did not
achieve widespread acceptance among the early industrialists and their
political supporters. Alternatively the work of such thinkers as Spencer,
Veblen, and Pareto, while containing critical analytic elements, could
more easily be incorporated into emerging liberal evolutionary, structural
functionalist theories more hospitable to capitalism and its supporters.
(e.g., Parsonian functionalism).
Second, while some within the nascent labor movement were clearly
influenced by Marx, they were cautious in adopting too revolutionary a
position in relation to the bourgeoisie and the state. Throughout the nine-
teenth century, worker resistance in Europe and in the United States was
typically met by bloody repression (Beaud, 1993) either at the hands of
factory owners acting independently or by the aid of the state. While
labor may have been predisposed to adopt Marxist theory, there was lit-
tle authentic opportunity to express such sentiments.
Finally, emerging developments within the structure of capitalist
forms of production were to create internal tensions within Marxist the-
ory. Indeed, much of twentieth-century Marxist thought has been an at-
tempt to rescue Marx from contemporary developments. Most notable
during the first half of the twentieth century was the rise of corporate
forms of industrial organization and a concomitant increase in the num-
ber of white-collar workers. These two developments were to influence
subsequent general social theory development and to stimulate reconcep-
tualization of class structure.
Adolf A. Berle and Gardiner C. Means, in The Modern Corporation
and Private Property (1933), Burnham in The Managerial Revolution
(1941), and Berle in The 20th Century Capitalist Revolution (1954) pro-
posed that control of the modern corporation had slowly shifted from
the hands of owners (either family or collectively through stock) into the
hands of managers. Quoting from Charles Francis Adams writing as early
as 1869, The system of corporate life is a new power, for which our lan-
guage contains no name; . . . We have no name to express government by
36 Bill J. Johnston
monied corporations (Trachtenberg, 1982, p. 3). Corporatism and in-

dustrialism were being positioned to compete with capitalism as the es-
sential force of modern society, and the hired managers and waves of
clerical workers were portrayed as constituting a new class of workers,
neither owner nor laborer in the traditional sense. This new middle
class of workers posed something of a problem for traditional class the-
ory by substituting a three- (or more) class stratum for the binary oppo-
sition of bourgeoisie and proletariat. Now it is the case that Marx himself
had responded to the problem of class strata in identifying the petty bour-
geois and underclass of the disenfranchised proletariat. But this modifi-
cation never threatened the underlying binary logic of class theory. The
rise of a new middle class, however, was something of a challenge. The
mass of clerical workers, who were typically women, was more easily
handled. In terms of the nature and relationships of work, there is little
functional difference between the assembly line and the typing pool. Cler-
ical workers were firmly associated with subordinated labor. But man-
agers, especially top managers, were an entirely different case. These
positions were associated with varying levels of authority and control,
and as the argument was advanced, mere ownership without control is of
questionable value in terms of explaining social structure, function, and
dynamics. The shift in the basis of domination and subordination from
economic relationships to organizational authority has been a continuing
theme by those attempting to account for the rise of the middle class and
for the effects of continued economic restructuring associated with inten-
sified concentration and centralization of power into fewer and larger
corporate units.
Drawing on the work of Durkheim and Spencer in social theory, and
Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown in anthropology, an evolutionary form
of social theory emerged that attempted to explain extant structures, in-
cluding stratification, through an analysis of functions served. Talcott Par-
sons, drawing upon the work of these theorists as well as others (e.g.,
Weber and Pareto), produced The Structure of Social Action (1937) and
The Social System (1951) provided perhaps the most influential state-
ments of the functionalist perspective. A primary objective of this ap-
proach is to explain the creation and maintenance of the social order. As
outlined by Percy S. Cohen (1968) social order theories tended to be
grounded in reference to three primary factors: coercion, common inter-
est, and/or value-consensus. As a general theory of society, Parsonian
functionalism emphasized value consensus and institutional structures and
process, attempting to identify the functional prerequisites and boundary
maintenance processes that enabled an institution to persist. Within this
perspective one might interpret class structure, or more likely following
the Weberian influence and Warners conflation of class with status, the
stratification of SES positions, in terms of their contribution to maintain-

ing the status quo. While such an analysis might be useful, a host of crit-
ics have also pointed out that by emphasizing the consensual aspects of
system maintenance and social order, structural-functional explanations
ignore the ever-present conflicts and tensions inherent in society.
Ralf Dahrendorf
Dahrendorf (1958), was primarily responding to the overly consensualist
assumptions of Parsonian structural-functionalism in proposing a dialecti-
cal-conflict perspective grounded in the exercise of power relationships
(Turner, 1974, pp. 9296). In Dahrendorfs (1959) view, institutions are
constituted by various organizations; what he describes as Imperatively
Coordinated associations (ICAs). These ICAs are themselves characterized
by a complex of roles/positions. Positions in ICAs tend to be differentiated
by the distribution of power, which through normative processes, leads to
the emergence of a new basis of legitimate entrepreneurial authority. In
advancing the notion of ICAs, Dahrendorf is explicitly rejecting tradi-
tional Marxist theory while advancing a theory of industrial society.
As outlined by Dahrendorf (1959, pp. 4344) [T]he separation of own-
ership and control involved changes in the structure of social positions
and a change in the recruitment of personnel to these positions. Social
positions are now to be differentiated on the basis of exercise of control
rather than ownership. The functions and roles previously reserved to
owner/managers have been redistributed to stockholders, executives, and
investors and finance capitalists.
In Dahrendorfs (1959, p. 55) view, the new middle class is not one
class but two: executives who occupy command positions and are more
closely associated with the interests of capital, and the mass of clerical
workers who are associated with the working class. Dahrendorf asserts
that there are still classes, but the basis of class formation and structure
are no longer grounded in production or markets, but rather in the un-
equal distribution of authority among groups and quasi groups within
imperatively coordinated associations. This division within the middle
class is significant for the examination of social order and conflict, since
one can observe the relative similarity of interests between owners and
executives, on the one hand, and the mass of white-collar and working
classes on the other hand. The legitimation of power is the basis for the
creation and maintenance of a particular social order. Nevertheless,
power is also the resource and grounds over which role occupants com-
pete. While power may be hierarchically distributed among roles/posi-
tions, roles also tend to cluster along the binary dimension of authority
over others versus the relative absence of such authority, with the result
38 Bill J. Johnston
that social conflict tends to become polarized as conflict between the

rulers and the ruled.
While there are many similarities between Dahrendorfs and Marxs
formulation, a significant difference is that the former locates the source of
conflict within institutionalized authority relationships. As a consequence
of the convergence of interest in the effects of corporatism and industrial-
ism, a theory of industrial society gradually emerged as an alternative to
traditional Marxist class theory. The essential characteristics of the theory
of industrial society that gradually developed have been summarized by
Anthony Giddens (1987, pp. 2629) and includes the following:
1. The most significant set of changes to be found in the contempo-

rary world . . . [has] to do with the transition from traditional
societies, based primarily upon agriculture, on the one hand, to
industrial societies, based upon mechanical production and
exchange of goods, on the other.
2. The transition from traditional to industrial society represents a
progressive social movement. [Conflicts tend to be counterbal-
anced by the] beneficial features of the industrial order, which
both generates material affluence and is associated with the dis-
solution of traditional constraints.
3. In the early origins of the newly emerging industrial society, class
divisions were acute, and class relations were the focus of major
tensions. But these tensions have been largely displaced as ac-
cepted modes of industrial bargaining became established, in con-
junction with the extension of political citizenship rights. . . .
4. The rise of the liberal-democratic state is an essential element
accompanying the transition from tradition to modernity.
5. [T]here is an essential unity to the industrial order wherever it
emerges. [Following Weber some proponents of industrial society
theory argue that] large-scale organization is a necessary feature of
contemporary societies and that this has certain universal features
(italics in original).
6. The conception of industrial society has often been closely associ-
ated with so-called modernization theory. The key idea in modern-
ization theory is that the underdeveloped societies remain trapped
within traditional institutions, from which they have to break free if
they are to approach the economic prosperity achieved in the West.
For purposes of our discussion, the essential features of this approach

is to enable discussions of the declining significance of class theory and
class analysis, legitimation for examination of occupational status rather
than traditional class relative to identify formation and social action, and
legitimation of assumptions of meritocracy and processes of credentialism

within an examination of structures of social mobility. Within general
social theory, the industrial society thesis became a primary theoretical
alternative to Marxism.
Structural Marxist Developments:

Althusser and Bourdieu
Although Althusser shares with Dahrendorf and the industrial society
theorists a recognition that the class structure is evolving, he retains an in-
terest in the primacy of production relations as determinant, at least in
the last instance. In essence, Althusser in political-economic theory and
Bourdieu in development of the notion of habitus, are developing a per-
spective that retains much of the thrust of Marxs original work, while
purporting to better represent extant political, social, and economic con-
ditions (Resch, 1992).
Louis Althusser
Althusser rejects whatever historicist and teleological elements that may
have plagued Marxist theory, advancing instead a nonlinear, modernist,
and materialist science of history. Whereas Marx proposed that the
capitalist mode of production determined rather directly the political and
legal superstructure on the one hand and ideology on the other hand, Al-
thusser proposes that the mode of production remains determinant in the
last instance, although the last instance may never come. This recognition
allows examination of the relative autonomy of various institutional sec-
tors of the social formation, be they political, economic, or ideological.
The state, for example, may be more or less directly representative of the
accumulative interests of capitalists, but more likely to represent the gen-
eral interests of capital while also attempting to balance a variety of other
competing interests (including its own) in attempting to maintain social
perceptions of legitimacy. The various institutions that comprise the social
formation are considered to retain a distinctive character and influence,
yet together constitute a structured whole. Social actors must effectively
navigate these various institutional orders, each with its own axis of
power. The consequence of this line of argument is to introduce an ele-
ment of confusion. Historically manifest class structures and relationships,
allowing recognition of a variety of competing fractions and strata, within
a social formation characterized by the presence of competing modes and
forms of production, introduces the idea of a hierarchical structure of po-
sitions and roles (Resch, 1992, p. 28) without clear determination of when
and how hierarchical positions influence social processes.
40 Bill J. Johnston
In Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus, Althusser (1971)

positions ideology as of particular significance. Beginning from the ques-
tion of the reproduction of the conditions of production of a social for-
mation, Althusser makes a distinction between state power that may be
considered in a traditional sense of a monopoly of the means of repres-
sion, and state apparatus considered as the organizational manifestation
of the political, and also the object of contestation by parties in order to
wield power. Since the raw exercise of power may generate opposition
and resentment, it is preferable to disguise the exercise of power through
other means. One means is to develop ideological state apparatus such as
the schools. There, children may be taught not only the knowledge and
skills (the know-how) necessary to meet the technical needs of production,
but also may be socialized and enculturated to accept the habits of mind,
forms of analysis, and dispositions to view the extant social formation as
natural and rational, or at least as inevitable. In this regard, ideology is
considered an imaginary symbolic system, representing prevailing visions
of the society. That ideology constitutes an imaginary system that may not
reflect the objective interests of its carriers or even of objective con-
ditions of the social formation is of little matter. The evaluation of ideol-
ogy is not to be found in determinations of truth, but rather in the degree
to which it provides cohesion (Poulantzas, 1973), and beyond that, to the
manner in which it shapes the practical interests and practices of individ-
ual agents formed as subjects. Paralleling the analysis of imperialism con-
sidered not so much the projection of capitalism upon a subordinated
people, but rather the imposition of a worldview, the objective of an ide-
ological state apparatus is to engage in a process of domestic imperialism.
Pierre Bourdieu
One of the difficulties with Althussers description of ideology and sub-
ject formation is that individual agents are portrayed as little more than
autonomic and passive recipients of the determinant dominant ideology.
Bourdieu (1977a, 1977b), while not a Marxist, arrives at a somewhat
similar position to that of the structuralist Marxists. For Bourdieu, the lo-
cation of oneself or others in social space becomes a two-dimensional
(class and culture) rather than a one-dimensional (class) enterprise (Rupp,
1997). While the political and economic power exhibited by dominant
groups allows considerable class-based influence over ideological agen-
cies such as schools, such influence is not absolute. Robert Paul Resch
(1992, p. 216) notes that for Bourdieu, individual subjects are not im-
printed with a fixed set of [ideological] rules and procedures as much as
they are endowed with a social sense of cultivated disposition. Bourdieu
(1977b, p. 487) is careful to focus analysis at the structural rather than at
the individual level. And it is in this light that one should consider his de-
velopment of the concept habitus, [the] system of dispositions . . .
[which] acts as a mediation between structures and practice; disposi-
tions that are differentially distributed across class positions, but act to
reproduce extant structures. Habitus is posited as representing various
class-stratified, taken-for-granted, and structured symbolic systems.
Habitus inhabits the collective unconscious establishing generative guide-
lines and boundaries upon individual and collective action. Among the
most important functions of habitus is to identify the relative status and
symbolic relationships differentiating various class and social positions.
To be identified, and to identify with a particular class one must have ac-
quired, through socialization in families, schools, and elsewhere, the sym-
bolic and cultural capital associated with that class. The result is that the
analysis of class structure and identity requires assessment of ones access
to, and exchange value of, economic, cultural, social and symbolic capi-
tal (assets). In some regards, habitus may be considered the functional
equivalent of dominant ideology, but in a softer yet more pervasive form.
For Bourdieu, both the economic and cultural constitute analytically
identifiable and separate fields. While Giddens tends to emphasize the
individuals ability to navigate between various fields (e.g., economic, cul-
tural, and political) in the process of socially situating themselves, Bour-
dieu retains a more determinant role for class and habitus. In essence,
Bourdieu retains a materialist grounding of class, but mediated by the
habitus, and continually evolving during processes of intergenerational
reproduction of economic and cultural assets.
In summary, the structural Marxists are attempting to respond to a
number of difficulties emerging from traditional class theory. One is that
the anticipated progression from class structure to class consciousness to
class action has not typically been observed. The response was a combina-
tion of attempts to separate an analysis of determinant structures from so-
cial consciousness and action, to reconceptualize the basis of class structure
and the manner in which class-based influences were manifest (often in
combination or mediated with other social factors), and to shift emphasis
to concrete patterns of general ideological reproduction at the institutional
level and strategies of class-based inheritance of power and privilege across
generations. In making these moves, however, the field was set to elevate
the analytic status of strategies and mechanisms of social reproduction
(through symbolic systems and patterns of discourse) relative to traditional
economic structural determinants. This in turn facilitated a theoretical shift
from assuming the primacy of class and class struggle toward exploration
of alternative theoretical positions attempting to explain emerging patterns
of social differentiation, exclusion, and mobility under conditions of disor-
ganized capitalism and postindustrial society.
42 Bill J. Johnston
From Structure to the Search for Identify:

Lenin and Lukacs
Marxist theory is grounded in the belief that the mode of production de-
termines the class structure; class structure provides the basis of class
struggle and ultimately of historical class action. Unfortunately, the gen-
eral failure of the proletariat to manifest their historic revolutionary role,
the failure of the working class to exhibit a consistent collective con-
sciousness and action, and the rise of the new middle classes that gener-
ated questioning of whether they, rather than the working class might
occupy the revolutionary position, all served to generate a crisis for
Marxism. Likewise, alternative theoretical explanations, associated, for
example, with the industrial society thesis, predicting the withering of
class, class identification and class action also have been disappointing. In
essence, throughout the twentieth century, to paraphrase Marx, class has
remained an important factor of social theory and analysis, but not just
as theorists and analysts would have it. In the following, we will explore
the contributions of Lenin and Lukacs, Gramski and Giddens.
Lenin and Lukacs

One line of argument attempted to retain the emphasis upon class by
highlighting the cultural dynamics of class formation, action, and repro-
duction. The Marxism of Lenin and Lukacs, for example, addressed class
consciousness but in a very peripheral way. For Lenin it was proper that
the leaders lead the party, and that the party lead the mass of workers.
Acquisition of power and the imposition of a new social order was the
objective. In obtaining this objective, the revolutionary class conscious-
ness of the workers was potentially useful but not the necessary means of
power acquisition. On the other hand, mastery of the means of ideologi-
cal production/ legitimation by the party was considered a necessary step
in the acquisition and institutionalization of revolutionary authority. In
recognizing the importance of ideology in the development of Praxis,
Lenin is moving away from traditional economistic accounts and legiti-
mating a more prominent place for an analysis of ideology. Lukacs fol-
lowed the Leninist argument, but placed a different emphasis upon class
consciousness. Since class structure was determined independent of actual
persons, one should not attempt to infer the structure of capitalist society
from the consciousness of citizens; likewise one should not infer the
true consciousness of the working class from the perceptions of actual
workers. It is class not persons that is the historical subject. The Com-
munist Party, however, was thought to serve as the concrete historical
representative of the interests of the workers. To identify the historical
manifestation of the class consciousness of the historical subject of his-

tory (i.e., working-class consciousness) one must turn not to members of
the working class, but rather to the party.
Antonio Gramsci
Gramsci (1971; also see Kolakowski, 1978), broke with the Leninist tra-
dition by advancing the idea that the development of a revolutionary con-
sciousness, that is, working-class consciousness, was a prerequisite to
historical action. Classes, not persons, may constitute the historical sub-
ject, but members of the working class could not be authentic participants
in class struggle unless they understood their own interests in opposition
to the bourgeoisie, the structure of capitalist forms of production and
exploitation, and their role in history. For Gramsci, the objective of revo-
lution is not simply to capture the reins of state power, that is, to monop-
olize the forces of coercion, but rather to interpolate a democratic and
egalitarian worldview. Gramsci observed that the ruling class inevitably
employed systems of ideological and cultural hegemony to advance their
interests, and to counter this tendency called for the emergence of organic
intellectuals to champion the working class. In advancing these beliefs,
Gramsci also modified Marxs conception of base/superstructure. For
Marx, economic relationships constitute the structural bases of civil soci-
ety; law, polity, and ideology constitute the superstructure. For Gramsci,
civil society must be conceptually divided into two parts. Relations of pro-
duction still constitute the base of civil society, but the superstructure of
the social relations of civil society are identified as cultural, ideological,
and intellectual. It is these superstructural elements that constitute the col-
lective common sense. The dominant class becomes a hegemonic class
by creating or controlling the institutions and from there are allowed to
dominate the principles of judgment of law and the state. Within this
framework, the rule of the dominant class is found to be grounded upon
ideological manipulation (hegemony, reification, etc.). This constitutes a
break with the prevailing notion that one could engage in objective
analysis independent of the actual conditions of history. While Gramsci
opened Marxist theoretical discussion to the central role of consciousness,
and to the forms of development of class consciousness, the problem re-
mained, as Gramsci well understood, that no historically oppressed group
had ever succeeded in imposing its worldview as a means to the ascent to
power. In a similar vein, Andrew Gorz (1982, p. 67) exploring the possi-
bilities of socialism, notes that In the immense majority of cases, whether
in the factory or the office, work is now a passive, preprogrammed activ-
ity which has been totally subordinated to the working of big machinery,
leaving no room for personal initiative. Loss of the ability to identify with
44 Bill J. Johnston
ones work is tantamount to the disappearance of any sense of belonging

to a class.
At present, it appears that several different research tendencies are
being exhibited. One is to treat class as an empirical construct, which
may be variously defined. One then searches for relationships between
class and some dependent variable of interest, possibly followed by an at-
tempt to generate a model of effect. At best this may lead to deductive ap-
proaches to theory building or may languish as another example of what
C. Wright Mills (1959) described as abstracted empiricism. A second
tendency is to concede that the identification of determinant relationships
between class structure and consciousness may be so tenuous that further
work in this direction is unwarranted. A third approach is to attempt
a reconceptualization of the structureagency relationship. Giddenss
theory of structuration is perhaps the most well-known example of this
approach, but interesting work is being done within this broad tradition
by Margaret E. Archer (1996) and in the focus on the symbolic and
exchange value of various assets (Robertson, 2000).
Anthony Giddens
Giddenss thinking about class has evolved over the years. Following a
flirtation with evolutionary liberalism in the 1960s and the examination
of class (1971, 1973), Giddens (1984) developed a new theory of society
that he called structuration. Society and social structures are not to be
considered things that determine the actions of individuals. Rather, the
interaction of various actors, involving the mutual interpretation of
meaning through a process of reflexive monitoring, over time gives rise to
interaction regularities, that is, social systems (Rossides, 1997, p. 68).
Such systems of habit and routine enable the efficient collective engage-
ment for access and control of economic and other resources and con-
strain the range of social action that is deemed appropriate. In this,
Giddens is advancing an interpretive sociology, but his theoretical project
of structuration is much broader than this. Indeed, it is to develop a form
of social theory that integrates the structural and interpretive.
Structure as the abstract set of constitutive rules, does not exist in
time and space. Rather, it is the instantiations of structure through sit-
uated human action that is space/time bound. Structuration refers to
the conditions governing the continuity or transmutation of struc-
tures, and therefore the reproduction of social systems (Giddens,
1984, p. 25). The duality of structure is found in the fact that the con-
stitution of agents and structures are not two independently given sets
of phenomena, a dualism, but represent a duality. According [to] the
notion of the duality of structure, the structural properties of the social
systems are both medium and outcome of the practices they recursively
organize (p. 25).
The manner in which this discussion connects with our interest in
class, is that class represents one structuring field (economic) among a va-
riety of others (e.g., status, race, and gender), that may be employed by
agents in the manifestation of social action. Derived from a Weberian no-
tion of class, Giddens attempts to integrate structure and agency in a
manner that retains recognition of the class structuration processes
within a capitalist economic system, but in a form that does not privilege
class analysis in the analysis of social systems.
Empirical Studies of Class,

Consciousness, and Action
While there is considerable debate on the proper way to conceptualize
class, the available empirical evidence is actually much more consistent.
Empirical work can be grouped within several traditions. One is the sta-
tus attainment and social mobility approach that was dominant during
the 1960s and 1970s. Here one may locate the well-known studies by
Peter M. Blau and Otis Dudley Duncan (1967), Duncan, David L. feath-
erman, and Duncan (1972), William H. Sewell, Robert M. Hauser and
Featherman (1976), Hauser and Featherman (1977), Featherman and
Hauser ( 1976), and Christopher Jencks (1979). Following primarily
from within the Weberian tradition, these studies link occupational status
hierarchies with a variety of outcome variables (e.g., educational attain-
ment, occupation mobility and attainment, income, lifestyle, and life-
chances). Whether one chooses to employ the construct of class or
socioeconomic status to interpret these findings, it is clear that economic
conditions have a direct and important influence on individual and col-
lective social outcomes.
A variety of studies have indicated that the majority of citizens in the
United States and Europe have a relatively consistent idea of the class
structure of their society. Typically within this line of research, class is
considered as a subjective status-group ranking of related occupational
positions, rather than being considered relationally as derived from the
structure of production or organizational authority. What appears clear
from these studies is that people are engaged in a process of identifying
(and distinguishing) self and other on the basis of a variety of socially
available structures. Class is clearly one of the these structures (others
may include race/ethnicity, gender, religion, region, and sexual orienta-
tion). Whether class is the primary dimension of social identification is
not at all established. Nevertheless, that some image of class structure is
a factor of social identification appears beyond dispute.
46 Bill J. Johnston
Another research tradition has been to explore the degree to which

various forms of collective social action derive from class identification
and identity, concluding that social identification and action is the result
of a variety of intersecting fields. Only rarely does one find a pure situa-
tion in which one says, Now I am going to act on the basis of class in-
terests. Now I am going to act on the basis of gender. Nevertheless,
there is a body of research to indicate that class action is an inherent com-
ponent of class consciousness. G. William Domhoff (1967), Goran Ther-
born (1978), Zeitlin (1980), and T. B. Bottomore and Robert J. Brym
(1989) have all engaged in an examination of the dominant class. They
find that this class does tend to have a high degree of self-identification of
themselves as a class, and participate in both formal and informal policy-
making centers that allow them to express their class interests in a rela-
tively unified and dominant manner. This finding, while of interest and
importance from the perspective of both class analysis and theory, is con-
sistent with Marxs belief that the ideas and interests of the ruling class
would dominate the society.
A more interesting theoretical question is the manner in which the
working and middle classes orient themselves toward social action. Mike
Savage (2000, p. 101) argues, following Bourdieu, that class is relational
in the sense that social groups differentiate themselves from others in
various fields, so that class culture is best conceived as a mode of dif-
ferentiation rather than as a type of collectivity. Individual identity con-
struction is the ongoing process of interpreting a variety of assets,
associated with class structure, class culture, gender, organizational posi-
tion, and so forth. That is, social action is the consequence of a complex
calculus of assets and opportunities derived from intersecting interpretive
fields. To the degree that each of these fields are socially derived, then
individual identity formation is structured (consistent with Giddens and
others notion of structuration); in this manner individual and relational
(e.g., class) identity may be more closely connected than some theorists
have proposed. In his empirical work, Savage finds a high level of consis-
tency in the perception of class structure, the relative status ranking
associated with various class positions, and the political and social impli-
cations that class position holds for the individuals life history. As noted
by Savage, class serves as a benchmark by which to compare self with
other and a field by which to locate self in social space. It is important to
note that especially among the working and middle classes, class struc-
ture is oftentimes used less as means of invoking a sense of belonging
than a dimension by which to differentiate themselves. In this regard, for
the majority of respondents in Savages study, identification with the
middle class was perceived to mean that one was ordinary, average, and
in the middle; one was neither exclusionary like the upper class nor part
of the lower class. Independence, dignity, and responsibility are now

coming to be associated with middle-class careers realized within an ever-
changing work environment.
So What are Educators to Make of All This?

Marxist class theory, as do competing explanations such as the industrial
society thesis, offer a creation story about social practices and social for-
mation. Such stories are important and interesting, but to the extent that
they are portrayed as the whole story or the foundational story, one must
remain skeptical. One may question, for example, Marxist class theory
but still retain an interest in class analysis. Within the class analysis project
one is perhaps more inclined to turn to Weber rather than to Marx for in-
spiration. Class analysis need not consider class antagonism to be the en-
gine of history, but rather considers class along with other dimensions
(e.g., race gender, occupational and status groups, political power, and
cultural capital) to be potentially determinate alone or to be in combina-
tion within any particular historical conjuncture. In this regard, the obser-
vations of two contemporary commentators on class are instructive.
Individuals are not members of a class; they engage in various class ac-
tionsindividually and collectively, in everyday life and in relation to ex-
traordinary events, and not just in relation to production and occupations.
In these acts, individuals may have multiple, overlapping, sometimes con-
tradictory, sometimes reinforcing interests based on their participation in
multiple, heterogeneous markets (Hall, 1997, p. 21, italics in original).
And, from Savage (2000, p. 149), class analysis is a mode of cultural
analysis. The traditional strengths of class analysis lay precisely in inter-
est in the cultural meaning of class.
Schooling is a complex enterprise, but at base, it represents an at-
tempt to socialize, enculturate, train, and perhaps stratify the young and
prepare them to take various positions in the society. In essence, school-
ing represents an agency of the state charged to reproduce (and occasion-
ally transform) the extant social formation (Althusser, 1971; Bowles and
Gintis, 1976; Carnoy and Levin, 1985). In order for educators to fulfill
either a reproductive or transformational role, however, they must pos-
sess, (either implicitly or explicitly) an image of the social formation, that
is, a set of beliefs which, following Therborn (1978), influence their per-
ceptions about what is good, possible, and desirable at the general social
level, and that they employ in determining the curriculum and practices
to be used with the particular mix of students who happen to be in their
charge. The primary question from a systemic perspective is the degree to
which structures and practices are, or are intended, to serve primarily re-
productive or transformative purposes. Nevertheless, it is also the case
48 Bill J. Johnston
that few educators tend to represent their work as reproductive or trans-

formative. Rather, they most often express their intention as making a
difference in the lives of children; by which is meant to contribute to
childrens personal and social development and to provide these children
with the social and intellectual skills that will allow them entry to higher
education or to the job market.
The question we pose here is, how might teachers employ the concept
of class in such a manner that they are better able to realize their own in-
structional interests to make a difference in the lives of children and si-
multaneously contribute to the social interest in contributing to the social
good by reducing forms of structured social inequality? We suggest that
since the primary social correlates with academic performance of children
are related to class, race, and gender, then one place to begin is for teach-
ers to explicitly recognize these basis of influence. To propose a renewed
emphasis on the study of the social purposes and institutional structures
that influence schooling and educational outcomes, tells very little about
how this emphasis might be accomplished. Here we propose that one
promising way to proceed is to engage in an analysis of the economic, or-
ganizational, cultural, and social assets associated with various institu-
tional fields (Savage, 2000). Such an analysis leads to identification of the
knowledge, competencies, symbols, and beliefs that any individual must
master prior to entry into various occupational and civic spaces. More-
over, the teacher is provided with a common metric from which to en-
gage in an analysis of the particular asset sets that are privileged by state
departments of education, the district and school, and various local com-
munity groups and may engage in assessments of student mastery of val-
ued assets. This is not a new form of analysis for teachers who have long
attempted to generate developmentally appropriate plans of study for
their students. It may, however, introduce a new focus of analyses; one
that more explicitly links classroom activities with broader social and in-
stitutional structures, functions, and processes. In one regard, the recent
emphasis on policy alignment that is driving the standards and ac-
countability movement is precisely such a form of analysis. The prevail-
ing policy alignment focus, however, is less oriented to attaining
outcomes of social equity and justice and more oriented toward reinforc-
ing dominant forms of stratification based on possession of technical
knowledge and decontextualized skills, which serves to further privilege
property over person rights (Apple, 2001).
Having engaged in an analysis of various assets, the task then be-
comes a more familiar one of selecting instructional methods that allow
the students to begin to acquire additional relevant assets such as cul-
tural, civic, and political-economic understandings. Since the assets ap-
proach imbeds knowledge, skills, and perspectives within the social
context, it would seem necessary to adopt instructional strategies that

also are contextualized. One way to accomplish this is suggested by Mar-
garet R. Somers (1997) discussion of narrativity and Donald E. Polking-
hornes (1995) discussion of narrative analysis. Within this general
approach the task is to examine examples of narratives in order to dis-
cover the underlying perspectives, frameworks, and interests that moti-
vate the speaker. One typically finds that individuals employ various
socially available interpretive frameworks during the process of deter-
mining what they may reasonably expect to accomplish, the manner in
which they should act in various settings, and reciprocally to determine
their own identity in social space. I am reminded here of a school princi-
pal talking about the low-income students in his school. I paraphrase
only slightly. These students understand the minimum wage job struc-
ture, but they can neither conceive nor have the language to talk about
the high-wage job structure. Nothing in their experience prepares them to
project a future different than what they have already experienced. We
would propose that the instructional task in a democratic society is to ex-
plicitly convey to students the types of economic, organizational, cultural,
and social assets required in various domains, and to develop among stu-
dents the systemic and structural understanding to critically assess and
project personal trajectories of access into these domains. Understanding
class structure, class formation, and class action is not the only factor that
must be considered, but it remains one important factor.
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PART 2
CLASS WORK
To participate in the social world, people must engage in class workin

everyday life. Class work is both the embodiment of a class position and
work to maintain and change class position. Deborah Hicks and
Stephanie Jones reveal how young girls live in an urban neighborhood
and school. These girls struggle to find a safe place. Being good is
linked to class mobility if only in the rhetoric of the school. Being
badreaffirms ones working-class origins. Jill Koyama and Margaret A.
Gibson reveal the class work when race and class overlay. The middle-
class students are white and the working-class students are of Mexican
origin. The marginalization of the latter group is in some sense the work
of the middle-class school. The Mexican-descent students resist the white
construction of them as other even as they work to construct their own
identities in such a way that allows the possibility of school success and
possibly class mobility. Luis Urrietta Jr. pushes the examination of class
work by Latinos in his study of Chicana/o social mobility and the role of
education in such. The class work he analyzes reveals how subordination
creates internal divisions within the Chicana/o community and a form of
class stratification he terms a third class system. This system is marked by
a plural hybridity, permeability, and improvisation.
Richard Beach, Daryl Parks, Amanda Thein, and Timothy Lensmire
reveal that school culture works to perpetuate white privilege, and show
how a dynamic young teacher uses critical literacy to try to penetrate this
culture for working-class youths of many races. He challenged many dis-
courses including that of individualism by having students examine how
institutional forces shaped both discourse and social practices. Encourag-
ing alternative and conflicting value stances while discussing literature be-
came a means to challenge existing dominant discourses. Class work can
lead to the realization of how discourses construct social class, race and
gender, and to imagined alternatives.
53
Cheryl Fields-Smith interrogates class differences in African-Ameri-
can families negotiation with schools, and how some of these families
came to mimic white patterns of parental involvement in order to get the
school to work for their children. She notes that current conceptualiza-
tions of parent involvement do not capture the class work of working-
class Black parents but that the middle-class Black parents had similar
social capital to draw on as whites and thus better fit the largely white,
middle-class model of parent involvement that schools use to define who
is supporting them and not. Yet the middle-class African American par-
ents did more than support the school on the schools terms. Rather, they
extended the curriculum to include content about African Americans and
engaged in a form of advocacy for their raced children.
The class work of the middle class in home-school relations is further
examined by Janice Kroeger. She uses the idea of heteroglossia to inter-
pret how middle-class parents both constitute their own advantage even
while they open up venues that may allow another language to be spoken
at times. She emphasizes the responsibility of the school and educators to
question the activities of the middle class to reproduce their class advan-
tage and to actively use the various languages in the school to get beyond
class as a reproductive force.
3
LIVING CLASS AS A GIRL
Deborah Hicks and Stephanie Jones
Listen to the voice of a girl growing up in a small, working-poor commu-

nity in a Midwestern city. Brandie, at the time in the fifth grade, has com-
posed a poem modeled after George Ella Lyons (1999) collection, Where
Im From. Brandies poetic rendition captures some of the language,
experiences, and feelings that are shaping her life as a young girl.
I am from a ghetto neighborhood where people fight in the streets.

I am from the other end of Garner where people are always arguing
in the streets.
I am from the past who died.

I am from my Grandpa who died in World War Two.
Underneath my bed is a box full of pictures falling out like old
memories just coming back to me.
Its like the past who died and they came back to say hi.
I am from my Grandpa with gray hair, strong coffee and World

War Two.
He is kind, he has loving collections of knifes and he was never
mean.
I am from the park where I play in, to the slide I slide down.
I am from the God who made me.
I am from Jesus who died on the cross for me.
I am from the eagles flying the sky.

I am from the swings that go high into the sky.
55
56 Deborah Hicks and Stephanie Jones
I am from the deep blue sea where the whales swim.

I am from the pool where I swim.
I am from the red white and blue which are the colors of my country.
I am from the heroes who saved our country and sometimes even
died.
I am from the pictures I take and the pictures I draw.
I am from the Tears of a Tiger because it is sad.

I am from the books I read because it is something to do.
I am from the know-it-all because my brother thinks he knows it all.

I am from the pass-it-on because my brother tells my secrets to his
friends.
I am from the attitude because my sister always has an attitude.
I am from my Mom who had me.

I am from my Grandmother who took care of me.
Brandies poem conveys in literary terms the ways in which the so-
cial, cultural, and religious aspects of life in her ghetto neighborhood
become refracted dimensions of voice and psychology. Lower Bond Hill,
the urban community in which Brandie is growing up, is a close-knit
neighborhood in which family is at the core of ones identity and values.
Brandie captures this through her frequent references to family members,
all of whom share the tight physical spaces of a run-down wood frame
house. Brandie is being raised by her grandmother, a matriarchal figure
who has struggled to hold things together for a family living in extreme
poverty. In hard times and in better times, a belief in God and Jesus, pro-
vides a source of strength and spiritual comfort. Books also make their
appearance in Brandies poem. The novel Tears of a Tiger, like Brandies
real life, takes place within a landscape of urban poverty. The distinctive
slice of working-poor America that Brandie depicts in her poem, how-
ever, is one that the critical educator bell hooks (2000) once called the
hidden face of povertypoverty as lived by working-poor white folk.
Though diverse in the ways in which all urban neighborhoods are cultur-
ally, racially, and linguistically hybrid in contemporary times, Lower
Bond Hill has, since the postwar years, maintained a distinctive identity
as a historically Appalachian enclave within a Midwestern city.
During the Johnson administrations War on Poverty, there emerged
attempts among educators and psychologists to understand the particular
landscapes of poverty shaping the lives of youths across America. The face
Living Class as a Girl 57
of white poverty, as seen in Appalachia, among sharecroppers and migrant

workers, and in cities was captured in the work of writers such as Robert
Coles (1967). This concern about the distinctive ways in which particular
landscapes of poverty are formative of thought, feeling, imagination, and
identity is our focus as well. We reach back to an era during which white
poverty was a concern of policymakers, psychologists, and educators, and
yet bring this focus into a contemporary context focused around the lives
of working-poor girls. As researchers, we draw on ethnography as a tool
for developing a deeper understanding of life and learning among girls
growing up in poverty. As literacy educators with activist agendaswe
want to help girls shape strong and viable futures for themselves in Lower
Bond Hill and in the middle-class worlds around itwe draw on the writ-
ings of educators who have made similar commitments. We develop the ar-
gument that critical educational efforts have to be answerable, in the sense
used by Mikhail M. Bakhtin (1990) to the ways in which voice and psy-
chosocial history emerge in particular landscapes of poverty.
In her essay, A Question of Class, the novelist Dorothy Allison
(1994) writes about how she became aware of the fact that for middle-
class people, she and her family were they or those people. Grow-
ing up female, poor, and white became a complex web through which
thought, feeling, and identity became refracted. The central fact of my
life, Allison writes, is that I was born in 1949 in Greenville, South Car-
olina, the bastard daughter of a white woman from a desperately poor
family, a girl who had left the seventh grade the year before, worked as a
waitress, and was just a month past fifteen when she had me. That fact,
the inescapable impact of being born in a condition of poverty that this
society finds shameful, contemptible, and somehow deserved, has had do-
minion over me to such an extent that I have spent my life trying to over-
come or deny it (p. 15).
In our efforts to understand the experiences of girls growing up in
Lower Bond Hill, we wondered how young girls negotiated such tensions
as those articulated by Allison. Our stories and analyses concentrate on
the lives of four girls, two in the second grade and two in the fifth grade,
whom we have known as teachers and ethnographers. Like scholars, fic-
tion writers, and critical educators whose work has informed our own
hooks, Allison, Myles Horton, Paulo Freire, and Bakhtinwe have
attempted to maintain a focus on the concreteness of a particular land-
scape and history, and on the speaking voices of girls growing up in that
landscape. This kind of vision, informed as much by literature as social
science, offers the best hope for pedagogical activism that is, indeed,
answerable to the lives, hopes, and dreams of girls who are at risk of
becoming they.
Everyday Life and Work

in Lower Bond Hill
James Fallows (2000) has argued that poverty in contemporary America
has become increasingly invisible, as the middle-class workforce has
moved out of older industrial workplaces and into more secluded profes-
sional locales associated with the new work order. Though Michael Har-
rington (1962/1993) once wrote of a similar kind of invisibility in his
book The Other America, communities such as Lower Bond Hill have
unquestionably become more isolated as the economy has moved away
from an older manufacturing base. In the postwar economy, this was a
stable blue-collar community. Warehouses and factories offered employ-
ment for locals and an incentive for their rural kin to head north from
eastern Kentucky and Tennessee, or west from West Virginia and Vir-
ginia. Middle-class professionals from the city worked alongside local
community residents. These once thriving local businesses are now
largely deserted factories and warehousesghostly vestiges of times
when locals who were laid off could walk down the street and find an-
other job within a day. In the changing social landscape of the new global
economy, middle-class professionals have little or no contact with this
isolated community. In a complementary way, many residents of Lower
Bond Hill spend their entire lives in the neighborhood, leaving mostly to
work first, second, or third shifts in the service industry and factory jobs
that are available beyond Lower Bond Hills borders.
Its geography contributes to the isolation of Lower Bond Hill relative
to the city whose affluent business center lies just minutes away. Driving
into the community, one is struck by its resemblance to what those living
in rural Appalachian areas would call a holler. Behind the neighbor-
hoods center, basically a crossroads in which the essentials of a bank,
health center, and popular coffee shop can be found, rises a steep hill that
adds to a sense of landscape familiar to original rural migrants. Its
boundaries are marked on one side by a busy road that shadows the tra-
jectory of a local river, and on the other side by an industrial area that ex-
tends under a viaduct. The only road without such distinctive geographic
boundaries has also become emblematic of the changing demographics of
Lower Bond Hill. Sandwiched in between apartment buildings occupied
largely by white residents is a stretch of apartment dwellings and a small
grocery store where Latinos live and work. These new immigrants are
named by local residents as Mexicans, though their small subcommu-
nity actually reflects a sometimes uneasy alliance of Mexicans and Gua-
temalans. Also strewn along Garner Street, depicted by Brandie in her
poem, are clusters of black families. As this road winds its way further
out of Lower Bond Hill, the predominate whiteness of the community
begins to shift toward the racial identities more frequently associated

with urban poverty in the minds of many middle-class whites.
At the center of the neighborhood lie groupings of small brick apart-
ment buildings, tightly clustered along side streets typically two or three
city blocks in length. Out on the streets, locals congregate to share news;
children play with friends, cousins, and siblings or half-siblings; folks
stop in the local coffee shop for a bite to eat and a smoke; a young Latino
couple waits at the bus stop without being acknowledged by community
residents walking by.
Like working-poor communities across America, Lower Bond Hill
has faced its share of challenges. Industrial pollution has, since the post-
war years, been the Achilles heel of a community in which factory work
was for years the primary source of income for men. A toxic waste stor-
age facility was once a source of air pollution that led to a government
crackdown. The facility still operates, though it is now bound by stricter
regulations about how toxic waste is stored only blocks from where chil-
dren spend their growing years. Because the community sits in a valley,
on humid days the air can become heavy with the sickly sweet smell of
chemical pollutants stored in barrels or emitted into the air from the
smokestacks of the few working factories. Combine this with the smells
from the citys main sewage treatment plant, located only blocks from the
neighborhood elementary school, and it becomes a challenge to be inside
an apartment building or inside a classroom with no air-conditioning.
Over the past five years, the neighborhood has been riddled with a
new kind of challengea pernicious street drug called OxyContin. Paul
Tough (2001) has referred to OxyContin as the Trojan horse of street
drugs. A prescription painkiller with an opiate base, OxyContin doesnt
appear at first that different from other prescription drugs that have
long been used to achieve a mild recreational high. OxyContin, how-
ever, packs a dangerously addictive punch. When crushed (thus chang-
ing the time-release chemistry of the painkillers) and either snorted or
mixed with water and injected, it produces a warm, long-lasting high
that can become addictive within weeks. As Tough writes, OxyContin
might look like a casual Saturday-night drug, but it its a take-over-
your-life drug (p. 63). OxyContin made its way through rural Amer-
ica, starting in Appalachian communities and in rural Maine and
moving into cities.
As this prescription drugs diversion became known in the medical
community a crackdown on legal prescriptions ensued, driving street prices
upward. Some residents who first developed an opiate addiction through
OxyContin have since turned to heroina cheaper street drug, but also
one connected with needle use. With the introduction of these new and
challenging social realities have come other ones. This small community
loses about one person each month to drug overdose. There has been an in-
crease of HIV and hepatitis C infections in a community where street drug-
related needle use was once relatively rare, and an increase in prostitution
as one way that women (and some men) can support a drug habit that can
cost up toand beyonda hundred dollars per day.
Schooling in Lower Bond Hill

Nestled amid residential side streets in the heart of Lower Bond Hill is a
1930s school building. Once an elementary (pre-K6) school, Linden El-
ementary School has recently added junior high grades at the bequest of
its urban school district. Parents and kin of children at the school can be
seen outside the school doors morning and afternoon, dropping off chil-
dren or waiting to pick them up. Otherwise, the school has been shaped
by a class ideology that aims, to appropriate Beverly Skeggs (1997)
phrasing, to help students become respectable. Teachers drive in
largely from suburbs, their SUVs and Toyotas parked safely close to the
school building. Due to district-wide budget cuts, most instructional as-
sistant positions, many of which were occupied by local community
members, have been cut. As a result, the faces of adult community mem-
bers present in the building are largely those of parents going into the
schools main office for a special occasion or meeting, often an unpleas-
ant one, and the community women employed as lunchroom servers.
Children going to school in Lower Bond Hill walk into a different social
order when they enter the building that has provided an education for
their parents, aunts and uncles, and sometimes even grandparents. The
in-your-face working-class language that goes with having an attitude is
unwelcome. As one teacher at Linden School described things, They [the
students and families] dont share our values.
Lower Bond Hill has struggled with an exceptionally high dropout
rate among its young people, rates that can reach 70 percent. For some,
dropout has become a way of life, and generations have depended on the
help of government assistance or through the unregulated economy. Cou-
pled with these high rates of dropout are low rates of academic achieve-
ment as measured by proficiency tests that have become important for
students in the second grade or higher. Linden School, as with schools
across the nation, is now being held accountable for the test performances
of its students. Accountability measures are always tied to the high-stakes
tests given in early March of the school year. If Linden School fails to meet
its mandated test score targets over the coming years, it faces the possibil-
ity of redesign, where faculty and professional staff clear the building and
a new administration and faculty are put into place by the district.
The schools response to these challenges has been a tightening of the

curriculum and a rigorous disciplinary order. Two security guards parade
the hallways of the school, their walkie-talkies always ready for a needed
communication with the schools administrative staff. Each year, there is
a push to achieve test scores that meet the targets set for specific grade
levels. In January and February of the previous school year, for instance,
the schools leadership implemented a proficiency boot camp. Teach-
ers were urged to wear army gear (e.g., fatigues) and lunchroom servers
were given bandannas with army fatigue patterns. Children in the second
grade and beyond spent much of the two months rehearsing skills and
strategies for the high-stakes tests. Military images were posted around
the school building and military music was broadcast over the loud-
speaker at the end of each school day.
Though teachers grumble about the proficiency tests and about the
heightened meaning they have assumed in recent years, an outright chal-
lenge to this system has become virtually unthinkable. In the ways de-
scribed by Michel Foucault (1978) the system of accountability and
regimes of testing have become a technologysupported by discourses
centered on academic standards (specific skills and strategies listed out by
content area and grade level), the proficiency tests that avowedly measure
childrens progress toward reaching standards, and test score mandates.
In the idiom of new literacy research (see Collins, 2000; New London
Group, 1996), educators write about multiple literacies required for par-
ticipation in a new work order, and about the value of hybrid language
practices. In working-poor communities such as Lower Bond Hill, how-
ever, the language of schooling in the twenty-first century has moved in
the opposite directiontoward what Bakhtin (1981) termed authoritar-
ian discourses. A monologic discourse of achievement and standards has
become the only means through which success can be measured.
As a result of these varied factors, everyday pedagogical practices at
Linden School are not in a deep or defining way connected with students
lives in Lower Bond Hill. Teachers, who are under increasing surveillance
(see Miller, 1996), feel squeezed by increasing expectations and declining re-
sources. The creative energy among teachers that Shirley Brice Heath (1983)
documented in the years of desegregation in the 1970s has given way, at
least in this neighborhood, to a gritty determination to help students achieve
higher test scores. Students, parents, and teachers alike seem to hold their
breath until the test results are announced in late May. The hope of respon-
sive or activist pedagogy, described at length in the writings of educators
such as hooks, Myles Horton, and Paulo Freire, seems a forgotten dream
a barely audible whisper amid a militaristic call to arms, and instantiated in
systems of control that effect teachers and students alike.
Ethnography and Activist Teaching
Flannery OConnor (1961) once wrote that an identity lies beneath what
is immediately visible, particularly what is visible to an outsider. [An
identity] is not made from the mean average or the typical, she wrote,
but from the hidden and often the most extreme (p. 58). OConnor ar-
gued for the strengths of the regional writerone immersed in the con-
crete language and values of a particular social landscape. The isolated
imagination is easily corrupted by theory but the writer inside his com-
munity seldom has such a problem (p. 54).
In the community in which we sought to become ethnographers and
teachers, the very things that contribute to the strength and resiliency of
children and adultsthe close bonds of family and kin for instance
made the kind of depth described by OConnor more precarious to
achieve. Both of us grew up in working-class family and community set-
tings, and one of us (Stephanie Jones) grew up in a neighborhood not un-
like Lower Bond Hill. However, as we sought to develop research
understandings about the lives and identities of young girls in the neigh-
borhood and to construct an activist pedagogical agenda with girls and in
response to them, our well-meaning intentions as educators and ethnog-
raphers bumped up against a core neighborhood value: What happens
here aint nobodys business. It has taken years to be able to hear the nu-
anced meanings in girls language, and to develop sufficient trust among
community members who have already been researched and often por-
trayed negatively. For one of us (Hicks), this effort has been a three-year
history of educational research and activism with the same girls and their
caretakers; for the other (Jones), the process has stretched out over a two-
year history with younger girls and their caretakers.
The vision that has shaped our pedagogical efforts is one that would
bring class into wider research and policy discussions about how educators
might address the needs of culturally diverse youths. A growing body of ed-
ucational research that examines how people live culturally (Lee et al.,
2003) has shown that differences in language, race, and culture, formerly
connected to discourses of deficit and disadvantage, are in fact powerful
tools for teaching responsibly, critically, and effectively. Anne Haas Dyson
(1993) has used the term permeable to describe pedagogies that make space
for diverse identities and languages. As Kris Gutierrez (see Gutierrez,
Baquedano-Lopez, and Tejeda, 1999) has argued, these create a third
space where the languages and systems of knowledge of students and
teachers can enter into teaching dialogues that are richer and more effective
because of their hybridity. Seldom have these research literatures, however,
considered the distinctive differences lived by poor and working-class white
students (for a notable exception, see Heath, 1983). We wanted to address
that void by creating and researching pedagogical practices that would
allow working-poor girls to engage in more productive kinds of hybrid lan-

guage and subjectivity. This kind of engagement, we reasoned, might allow
girls something we knew to be missing in their lives: a deep attachment to
school and academic practices. Our perspective on creating a critical liter-
acy pedagogy with girls thus builds on a tradition of cultural research and
on traditions of educational activism that are sometimes known as critical
pedagogy. This vision has been shaped by these varied literatures, and by
our own histories. Our voices and identities have been shaped in contra-
dictory landscapes of class, and we have drawn on our experiences to help
us understand the tensions and contradictions faced by young girls.
Our effort to create this kind of teaching and research agenda is femi-
nist in its focus and its intent. The work draws on a tradition of feminist
ethnography in which the focus is on the lives of girls and/or women, and
in which there is an effort, in the words of Angela McRobbie (1991/2000,
p. 135), to make talk walk. Much like McRobbie and other feminist re-
searchers studying gender, class, and pedagogical relations, we draw on
multiple disciplineseducation, psychology, cultural studies, anthropol-
ogy, and literary studiesin an effort to understand identity. Our efforts
draw on the work of British feminists such as Angela McRobbie, Diane
Reay, Beverly Skeggs, Carolyn Steedman, and Valerie Walkerdine2all of
whom have grounded their inquiries in the materiality of how relations of
class are lived by girls and women. Walkerdines work in the field of criti-
cal psychology provides an important bridge to our project. In a recent
book, Walkerdine, Lucey, and Melody (2001) depict the perspective on
psychology that drives their efforts to understand what it means to grow
up as a girl in contemporary Britain: It is the situated and specifically
local character of how people live and transform their lives that is impor-
tant. The new cultural geography has attempted to get to grips with some
of the local specificity of space and place. It is the deep embeddedness of
the production of subjectivity in the social and cultural that we are explor-
ing here. The social, cultural, and psychological are so strongly entwined
with each other that a disciplinary teasing apart does violence to the actual
mechanisms (p. 15).
This statement about inquiry that is focused on the production of
subjectivity in the social and cultural provides an important starting
point for our own study of girlhood lives. However, we approach this
kind of inquiry from a different anglethat of educators, and in particu-
lar literacy educators, interested in how girls growing up in working-poor
America engage with the languages and ideologies of school. From this
perspective, our lenses shift to a focus both on psychologyhow
thought, feeling, imagination, fear, and desire are shaped within this spe-
cific social and material landscapeand literacyhow girls read cultural
texts (e.g., literature, film, photography, television, and classroom talk)
and how we in turn (as teachers and researchers) read girls language and
respond to them. Reading, in this sense, is both a metaphor for how girls
engage in language practices that are always filtered through class rela-
tions and identities, and a method for conducting ethnography that sup-
ports activist teaching.
This kind of responsive, activist pedagogy has become increasingly dif-
ficult to create in regular language arts classrooms. As the two of us con-
fronted the demands faced by language arts teachers at Linden School to
bolster students achievements on certain kinds of language tasks, we de-
cided to conduct our work within an after-school environment. The schools
administration has generously supported our work, as the school has been
anxious to provide meaningful after-school programs for students whose
regular school day ends at 1:45 p.m. The two of us have created after-school
reading programs for girls in two grade levels. Eight to ten fifth-grade girls
met weekly with Hicks across their fourth- and fifth-grade years, and seven
second-grade girls worked with Jones first in her capacity as a classroom
language arts teacher (for eleven weeks) and then in a weekly after-school
program. These teaching practices have been supported by ethnographies
focused on girls community lives. We have interviewed girls and their pri-
mary female caretakers, attended community meetings, interviewed com-
munity organizers, spent time in the community spaces that have been
opened to us, and sometimes taken girls to other kinds of spacesmuse-
ums, theaters, libraries, and shopping malls in more affluent city landscapes.
You will meet four girls from Lower Bond Hill in the stories and
analyses that follow: Cadence and Heather (second graders) and Alison
and Mariah (fifth graders). Their struggles to negotiate the complexities
and contradictions of class differences become visible, as does their tenac-
ity in rising to those challenges. These are smart girls, loving girls, and
sometimes badass girls. These are girls whose voices, identities, and fu-
tures are being shaped in the complicated social landscapes of Lower
Bond Hill and Linden School.
Attitude Girls
At first glance, Cadence and Heather seem to be a study of contrasts.
Heather, with light freckled skin, long blond hair, and bright blue eyes,
comes to school well-groomed and often wears stylish studded jeans and
an Angel T-shirt. Olive-complected, brunette, tangled-haired Cadence
has deep green eyes and often wears clothing that is either too small or
too large. Heather is the good girl in schoolCadence is the bad
girl. Heather is often praised in class for her good behavior; Cadence is
punished several times a day with her name on the board, check marks by
her name, lost recess, or even detention.
An after-school girls group opened up an alternative pedagogical

space where the multiple voices of girls growing up and living in material
conditions afforded by poverty were not only welcomed, but utilized in
specific ways so that the girls could begin to actively construct hybrid
identities, attaching themselves to school in meaningful ways while hold-
ing tight to their community, class-specific identities.
The following transcript is from the second-grade after-school girls
group that Stephanie led. We were discussing the main character of
the Junie B. Jones books (Park, 1992). The girls read some of the books
in the series and had begun talking about what kind of girl Junie B.s
character is:
SUSANNE: She has an attitude.

CADENCE: A BIG attitude.
STEPHANIE: What does it mean to have an attitude?
CALLIE: Youre not listening to your teacher and you aint fol-
lowing the rules and you need more time to become better and
go to college and get out and do whatever you want.
STEPHANIE: So has anyone in your life told you that you had an
attitude?
CALLIE: Yeah, my mom did.
HEATHER: YeahHeather Ann Pike! You quit that now!
(Heather yells in a tone of voice that sounds parent-like.)
STEPHANIE: I remember when I was a little girl when my stepdad
would yell at me he would say, Stephanie Renee, wipe that at-
titude right off your face! and I would know I was being
meansometimes I was mean to him.
HEATHER: When I cuss my mom sticks soap in my mouth.
STEPHANIE: Has that happened before?
HEATHER: Once.
STEPHANIE: So lets think about Junie B. Jones. What kind of girl
is Junie B. Jones?
HEATHER: Shes nice and mean.
ABBEY: Shes only MEAN. Shes an attitude girl!
STEPHANIE: Do you like Junie B.?
(All of the girls shake their heads no except for
Cadencewho says yes.)
STEPHANIE: Cadence, you said yeswhat do you like about

Junie B.?
CADENCE: I like the way she have an attitude because I have an
attitude like that too.
STEPHANIE: Oh, so you can understand [her]?
HEATHER: Its a connection.
At this point a couple of the girls began to quietly voice some positive
perceptions of Junie B. Callie, a quiet, often withdrawn girl in the group
said, I like her because sometimes she says yes in a nice waylike when
she said yes to her mother about riding the busbut inside she said no.
Every girl in the group identifies with having an attitude at one
time or another. Some of the girls, however, have learned to voice, or per-
form, a different identity while theyre within the walls of school or under
a particular adults supervision. When faced with the character of Junie
B. as an attitude girl and asked whether or not they liked her, only one
student said yesCadence. Junie B. is a girl with an attitude, much like
all the girls in the groupbut she and Cadence have something in com-
mon that some of the others dont quite share. They are both just begin-
ning to tinker with the idea of saying or acting in a way that differs from
what they feel on the inside. Many of the other girls, Heather in particu-
lar, have already bought into the notion that they must be somebody else
when they enter the school building. This somebody else is often charac-
terized as a girl who listens quietly, follows directions without question,
and follows the established (though sometimes unspoken) expectations of
school, including presenting a sweet, docile, feminine identity. Though
the other girls insisted that they didnt like the main character, it was
clear that they enjoyed the stories, as they had each read book after book
in the series. The identity of the attitude girl may be one that the girls
believed I would not value as a teacher; therefore, even if they secretly ad-
mired Junie B. for being herself inside and outside school, the girls did not
readily admit to liking the character.
This phenomenon of internalizing the expectations of a dominant
other is described in the works of Freire (1970). Through this internal-
ization, the girls have created an automated filtering of their community
language. The filter, which serves as a personal automated surveillance
technology was documented by Tammy Schwartz in her work with ado-
lescent girls from Lower Bond Hill (2002, p. 105). The activist pedagogy
engaged with here aimed at reducing the personal surveillance and using
the home discourses as positive resources for young readers and writers.
Cadence, in her typical form of not silencing her community voice,

spoke her mind and connected herself personally to the character with an
attitude. People (like her stepfather) have told Cadence that she has an at-
titude, and she has begun to take on this identity as one of which she is
proud. I like the way she have an attitude, because I have an attitude like
that too. This attitude is demonstrated in a myriad of ways throughout
the school day and at home. Exaggerated sighs, rolling eyes, wobbling her
head back and forth with her eyes looking to the ceiling, and turning
her back to the authority figure are all ways in which Cadence exhibits
her attitude, power, and agency.
Cadence also uses a tone of voice, body language, oral language, and
social conversational style similar to many of the adults in Lower Bond
Hill. These characteristics, however, are punished in schooleven when
the student is clever, intelligent, and academically motivated. Teachers
and even the principal can be heard reprimanding Cadence in the hall-
way, in the auditorium, and in the cafeteria. They think she has a bad
attitude. This is the same attitude that students witness their parents
using to gain power in school. Students love to tell stories of a parent
going off on a teacher or the principalstories that end with the child
being told to do whatever you want by the parent. This power,
of course, is temporary and often retaliated against in coercive ways
within the school system, an aspect of power relations the students dont
yet understand. What they do understand is having an attitudeand
Cadence makes a critical connection with a book character who she
perceives is a girl like herself.
Heather, on the other hand, seems to be in a continuous mode of sup-
pressing her community voice and experiences as she negotiates school and
classroom expectations. There were times during the after-school group,
however, when Heather performed an identity that she would never let sur-
face in schoolor even around her parents or other community adults.
A girl in the group shared a story about being punished because she
was messin with her brothers who had been messin with her first. The
girl was prohibited from going outside to play, but her older brothers
didnt receive any restrictions on their privileges. The topic turned to one
of fairness and how their friend had been cheated. Heather, however,
had something else on her mind.
Did you punch em in the face? Heather asked as all the other
girls giggled.
The girl in question responded, I popped em and I kicked em
and I. . . .
I know where she kicked em at! Heather added with a squeal.

Later in the conversation I asked the girls, Have you ever kicked a
boy there? Heather and Cadence responded almost in unison, Yeah!
and as our talk continued, girls began to share the words they use for the
private area of a boy.
Cadence offered, The noodle thing, and everyone laughed.
Heather added, The hotdog, and more laughter followed.
A third girl reported that her brother called it a penis and I ex-
plained to the hysterical group that the real word, the biological term
used, is penis. I was quickly put in my place, however, as Cadence in-
formed me of what the real word is.
Un-uh! Thats not the real word though, Cadence said.
Whats the real word? I asked.
It starts with a . . .
D! finished Heather.
In case I didnt know what D meant, one of the girls spelled it out for
me, D-I-C-K. This led into an extensive conversation about the alleged
boys who curse all the time in school and the boys who simply identified
curse words using the first letter as a representation of the entire word or
phrase. You named a lot of the boys who were using these words. Are
there girls who use these words? I asked the group. I do, volunteered
Heather, I do when I just lose my temper.
Heather continued to tell us that she uses the B word and she calls
people Fat F-ers. When asked how she learned these words Heather
replied simply, My parents. However, then she replayed a story she has
almost certainly heard at home about God and Satan. I think Satan
made the bad words. She also made it clear to us her decision about
when and where to cuss. I dont cuss around my parents. Heather also
doesnt cuss around teachers, administrators, or around any other adults
in the neighborhood. She is quite successful at suppressing this part of her
language experience that is closely connected to her home and commu-
nityany teacher who knows Heather would be shocked to read these
comments. Slightly below the surface of Heathers good girl identity
lies an identity that she works hard to silence in schoolthe one that
kicks boys in the hotdog, fights, and uses strong language that reflects a
working-poor discourse.
Cadences Attitude as the Source of a Powerful Voice

Following several weeks of reading Vera B. Williamss collection of
poems in Amber Was Brave, Essie Was Smart (2001), I asked the girls in
our after-school group to think of a word that described themselves.
When it was Cadences turn, my instincts as a protective teacher took

over, and instead of hearing what Cadence told the group, I insisted that
she think of something good:
Cadence is. . . . I said to the group and paused, waiting for Ca-
dence to complete the sentence.
. . . A brat, Cadence responded.
Heather joined, Cadence is uh . . . bothering.
I looked at Cadence and wanted her to think of a positive character-
istic to describe herself so that I didnt even hear what she was trying to
tell me about her identity, Something good inside you Cadence.
Heather offered, Cadence is nice.
Cadence yelled, No, I dont wanna write!
Cadence did decide to write, however, and the writing in her writers
notebook from that day follows:
Cadence is a football that gets thrown in the air.
Cadence is a sock hung up in the air on a wire saying, Help me!
I do not do my work.
The following week I carefully approached the topic with Cadence

after we conferenced around a piece she had written about her family
gathering at Thanksgiving. Cadence, I want to work on another piece
with you. I thought you might want to work on a poem called Brat. I
thought it would be sort of like a Vera B. Williams poem. I knew Ca-
dence made a connection with these writings. Cadence walked away. I
continued, I dont think youre a brat, but you said some people do.
Cadence turned and looked at me, You write. I like how you write.
You tell me what to write. I got my pen poised.
BRAT. . . . PeoplesayImabrat. ButIreallyamnot.
Amnotabrat, Cadence spoke slowly and carefully, pronouncing
one word at a time as she watched my hand scoot across the page. Finally
Cadence was satisfied with the poem. It is one that mediates her voice
and agency as she talks back to the people who tell her she is a brat.
Cadences finished piece is a powerful statement about taking control
over her identity.
Brat!
People say Im a
BRAT.
But I really am
NOT
A BRAT!
Okay?
So, DeAndrew,
Pokey,
Brandon,
Tommy,
Leave me alone!
I am a sweet,
Smart,
Very smart
Girl.
The Girls and Their Mothers

In early spring I sat with Cadences mother, Lori, at Cadences grandfa-
thers kitchen table. His compact two-bedroom apartment is now home to
Cadence, her two sisters, and her mother. Their belongings are piled high
in the living room floor in reused cardboard boxes and in black garbage
bags, and I glance at them as Lori tells me about getting evicted from their
apartment a couple blocks away. . . . I kept telling them were gonna get
kicked out if you keep making all that noise. I see the stress on Loris
face. Shes not smiling the way she usually does and there is a definite ten-
sion under her eyes that Ive never seen before. Our conversation moves to
Cadence. How would you describe Cadence? I ask Lori. Shes a
headache. Opinionated. Hardheaded. Hard to keep her focus. Hard time
listening. Kinda like how I was growing up. How is she like you? I
probe. Her smartness, Lori tells me. Im a big reader.
Lori was offered a scholarship to attend college, but aware that she
didnt have the resources to pay for housing, food, books, or transporta-
tion, Lori declined the scholarship. Now, as a single thirty-one-year-old
mother of three girls, Lori has a burning desire to attend nursing school but
tells me simply, I just hate to jump in and have to stop because of the
hardships. The hardships, for Cadences mother, include getting the
money to feed, house, and clothe her children during the forty-eight-week
long training period that would be required if she wanted to study nursing.
With the girls father in jail on drug charges, Loris father unemployed and
suffering from depression and emphysema, a mother who is struggling to
make ends meet on her own, and a sister who depends on a man to take
care of her, Lori has more to worry about than caring for three daughters.
Taking a year off work and trying to get by using federal and state assis-
tance could be devastating. What do you hope for Cadence? I ask Lori.
I hope that shes better than me. That things wont be so hard for her, and
that she wont have to work at a job she hates. Lori pauses and looks hard
at me. I hope she has everything settled before she has kids.
When I ask her how the school can help to make these hopes come
to fruition, Lori responds, Patience. A teacher has to have patience.
Im dealing with a very bright, gifted child, but you have to have the pa-
tience to see what she can doit might be easy to overlook because
shes hyperactive. . . .
I hope Cadences teachers will have patience, too and that Cadences
life isnt as hard as her mothers has been, but I cant imagine her being
any better than her mother. Lori, like millions of other mothers in the
United States, is smart, resourceful, insightful, articulate, loving, caring,
and devoted to her family. But Lori, like millions of other mothers, has
been stifled at the hand of poverty.
After I leave, Lori puts her hair in a bun, pulls on her white work
pants and comfortable shoes, puts a book and lunch in her backpack,
kisses her girls, and heads out the door to walk up the steep hill to work
the third shift at a local nursing home. She tells me, I workthats what
I do.
Cadence wants to work, too. In two separate entries in her writers
notebook, Cadence wrote: I wish that I could be my mom because she
gets jobs and I dont get a job. I wish that I could too, but my mom wont
let me. . . .
Like Cadence, Heather wishes to be her motheror even better, a
princess version of her mother, as she writes in this piece: Once upon a
time there was a lovely princess. She lived in a castle. She lived with a
handsome prince. She had eight children. She was a great cook. Her toi-
let was running. She wanted to have more kids.
Heather is indeed (at least in desire) the princess she writes about.
During choice time at school Heather spends an enormous amount of en-
ergy designing and creating elaborate crowns and wands for herself. She
prances around the room twirling and whirling gracefully with her long
blond hair flowing behind her. Heather begs for her picture to be taken
as she stands straight, chin high, lips curled upward, and eyes beckoning
the wonder above her.
With the recent addition of a baby brother, Heather seems almost
obsessed with caring for others, thinking of having children, and being a
motherdespite her mothers urgings to wait to have kids. Heather
adores her mother and writes about her often. She wants to be her
mother, in fact, as she writes, I wish I can be my mom because you get
to love your kids. Heather plays the mother role as she cares for her
baby brother in this story:
I have a new baby brother. He is beautiful. He looks like me. His

name is Jed. He was named after my dad. I can hold him and I can feed
him. I can push him in the stroller. I can make him smile.
When he grows up I am getting him a car. I like to sleep by him. When
he cries I can stop him and sometimes he can sleep with me in my bed.
When I get home I am going to give him a bath and take him outside
with me. I am taking him to the park and having a picnic and then I am
going to show him off.
I love my brother.
Like most of the young girls in this community, Heather is already at-
tuned to many of the details of caring for babies. After spending time
with Heathers mother, its not hard to understand why Heather wants to
be like her mother, to be her mother. The following piece of writing con-
veys some of these reasons:
I love my mom.
She makes me laugh.
She loves me and my little brother.
She always takes care of us.
She always makes sure I eat.
She likes to read with me.
She likes when I pick flowers for her.
She likes when I write.
She likes to bake.
I love my mom.
Dena loves Heather as openly and outwardly as Heather loves her

mother. In a home-school communication journal I kept with families,
Heathers mother responded to my positive comments about Heather: I
must agree on your compliments on Heather. She is a great child. She lis-
tens very well at home as well. She always tries to help me with lots of
things. I enjoy spending my time with her myself.
Dena spends much time with Heather, outside her recently acquired
full-time job at a local bank. Dena tells me, Anything she wants to do, we
do. If Heather is watching Nickelodeon at home and a website address is
advertised for activities connected to the show, Dena helps Heather connect
to the Internet. If Heather is looking through a magazine at home and sees
a recipe for a cake, they make one together. One time Heather was watch-
ing one of her favorite television shows, Zoom, and had a question. Dena
helped her e-mail someone on the show. Im teaching her to type . . . I want
her to be hip to the real worldlike where I am.
Cadence is still struggling to find accepted ways to fit in a middle-class
institution like school. And though Heather has learned to seemingly suc-
cessfully juggle various ways of acting, talking, and being in different class
contexts, a strong classed identity lies just below the surface. If Cadence
and Heather arent strategically invited to attach themselves to school and
academic success in a way that values their community identities
strongly connected to their mothers identitiesthey may be getting a job
sooner rather than later. And growing up to have children doesnt nec-
essarily mean being grown. A thirteen-year-old friend of Cadences family
has just announced her pregnancy. All of this scares Lori and Dena, but
they know these are simply more pieces of a complicated reality, particu-
larly in a working-poor community like Lower Bond Hill. To overcome
these challenges and pressures, teachers and schools must do more than
increase standards and implement challenging curriculathey must listen,
watch, understand, empathize, and then respond directly to the social,
emotional, and historical needs within this particular place at this partic-
ular time. Then, and only then, can we help Cadence and Heather to
sort through and realize their own cross-class, complex hopes and dreams
for themselves:
By Cadence: By Heather:
I want to be a vegetarian. I wanna be an artist.
I want to be a hooker. I wanna be an actor.
I want to be a tom girl. I wanna have a nighttime job.
I want to be myself. I wanna work at a gas station.
I want to help the old people. I wanna be a mathematician.
I want to be a doctor. I wanna be a nurse.
I want to be a character. I wanna be a baker lady.
The Power of Language

Alison and Mariah, in the local idiom of Lower Bond Hill, are cousins. In
some middle-class settings, they might be considered distant stepcousins.
The two girls are neighbors, only needing to cross the street to reach one
anothers apartment buildings. Through these ties, the two girls have de-
veloped close bonds across their fifth-grade school year. Though they oc-
casionally fall into the youre my friendyoure not my friend anymore
cycle of preteen friendships, their family histories and shared neighborhood
experiences eclipse an occasional fracas, even a threat to fight. The two
girls sit near one another in their language arts classroom, sharing secrets
and notes in the interstices of the official reading and writing curriculum.
For girls with such tight bonds of family and friendship, however, the
two could hardly be more different. In the classroom, Alison conveys a
good girl identity that is frequently connected in the minds of teachers
to her being a good student. She rarely causes her teachers any trouble.
She is usually on-taskdoing what she is supposed to be doing, complet-
ing her homework in a regular and timely manner. A sweet, little-girl de-
meanor is part of Alisons charms. She is small and thin in frame, with
long blond hair and blue eyes. She acts the part of a princess: sweet, soft-
spoken, and yet powerful in the attention she receives.
Mariah asserts a different kind of power. She is often perceived in the

classroom as a troublemaker with what teaching adults call a foul
mouth, or what those in the neighborhood might call an attitude.
Mariah strongly voices a working-class identity. She is nearly one year
older than Alison as well as many other girls in her classroom. Part of her
maturity is a more overtly sexualized way of performing her working-class
femininity. A little hottie, is one description voiced by a visiting student
teacher; too hot, too fast, are other words spoken about Mariah or to
her. In the ways described by Bakhtin (1984) in his writings about carni-
valesque relations, much of Mariahs power is achieved by subverting the
official discourses of middle-class schooling. Her darker kind of attrac-
tiveness (she has brown hair and expressive brown eyes) and frequent out-
bursts of anger evoke the tougher edges of growing up in a sometimes
unforgiving landscape. Mariah cusses; she fights. She can play the badass
girl that classroom teachers dread having to discipline and educate.
The girls distinctive voices in relation to neighborhood landscapes
can be heard in stories of near misses with sexually threatening adult
men. Many of the eight girls in the after-school program for fifth graders
talk about rape and other forms of violence aimed at little girls. In one
after-school meeting, these stories come out, ironically, as the girls re-
spond to some questions about the meaning of romance in their lives.
One girl, Nicole, has invented her own question about What girls
should be like. Her response to her own question brings up neighbor-
hood words for female sexual identity: sluts, hoes, bitches, and doing
tricks. The power of these neighborhood words opens a door to commu-
nity stories in which the girls in the group had to find the right language,
or the right response, to ward off the advances of a creep.
Alisons story calls up a narrative theme that reverberates through
several of the girls stories of being approached by a man seeking sex. A
man driving a red pickup truck with silver detailing, has cropped up in
more than one girls narrative. Alison tells about a time when she, her
younger brother, and her aunt were walking by the Kitchen (a popular
local coffee shop) and the man in the red truck made an attempt to phys-
ically grab her and drag her into his vehicle.
We as standin right here [demonstrates]

An up by Kitchen theres this red truck, and it had like silver lines
on it
Had this big rusted ol {uh, ladder on top of it
girl?: {pervert
An uh, so he start ridin real slow and starin at me like this
[demonstrates]
I start lookin over like this.
He went down on the under / other end of Garner like this
He, uh, looked down on the other / Garner like this

He start comin up like this and he stopped right here at the light
He turned over and looked at me, he start reachin over to his door
like this
An he went like this, he went like this [demonstrates mans arm
movement]
An was openin up his door
An I started screamin, I was like Cheri, Cheri, Cheri HELP ME!
An the light turned Walk an I took off dippin cross the street
I as screamin and cryin
The guy slammed his door shut and start ridin up there
I was holdin on to Cheri like this cryin
I ducked my head underneath her shoulder
An the guy came ridin by
This story about a near encounter with this man (named a pervert
by one girls inserted comment) was met with rapid acknowledgment
from other girls. Brandie proclaimed in a high voice that the same man
was following her. Elizabeth announced that she knew someone with a
car like that.
Listen to a similar story told by Mariah during the same after-school
meeting. She conveys in a raw, working-class language a related kind of in-
cident in which a man seeking sex approached her on the street. Woven into
Mariahs story is a thread common to neighborhood sexual narratives:
Male outsiders often associated with sexual violence or perversion are Mex-
icans and blacks. Mexican men (many of whom are young) are in the minds
of young girls such as Mariah, connected with a darker side of community
life in Lower Bond Hill. Prostitution occurs for drugs and for money
or both. Mexicans are believed to be more commonly connected with such
illicit sexual practices as, in the words of Brandie, theyre rich. Mexican
men are believed to carry around bundles of cash in their pockets and
to seek out girls and young women as sex partners. Mariahs story, proba-
bly a mixture of fact and hyperbole, recounts two incidents in which Mexi-
can and black men made lurid sexual advances toward girls. In this
narrative, however, adult women (Nicoles mother), Mariahs older brother,
and Mariah herself, use in-your-face language to counter these sexual
advances. Hers is a different kind of identity than the one conveyed in
Alisons story of a young girl hiding her face in the crook of an adults
protective arms.
Theres this girl, I think it was Nicole and Tiffany

I guess theyre walkin down the street
And this Mexican asked them to get in the car
Nicole dipped, she said fuck you, HELL NO!
She dipped in Paradise
She told her Mom, her Mom got out of the Kitchen
She was like, YOU FUCKIN PRICK, IM GONNA KICK YOUR
ASS!
The Mexican drove off real fast!
But then again that time, it was like around, around 7:00
It was me and Nicole, we were walkin home
Cause she was gonna stay all night with me
Cause my Mom said she could
An we were walkin home, cause I lived on Burns
An uhm, this Black dude he was followin us all the way home
I got to the door, he was like, You wanna go for a ride?
I was like, Where?
He goes, Down the alley
I said, Fuck you no
My brother looked out the window, my brother was like, What
the fuck you just ask?
Like I told him fuck you no
Hes like, Told who?
Like this guy whos tryin to make me get in the car
My brother ran down them steps
My brother(s) like, You better get the FUCK away from my sis-
ter fore I chase you down all the way to Brown, you BLACK
MOTHER FUCKER!
The differences in how the two girls voice language that either re-
flects the in-your-face identity of a girl with an attitude or a more middle-
class femininity familiar to many teachers can also be seen in their
readings of a cinematic text. In the girls pre-teen peer group cultures in
the classroom and in the neighborhood, perhaps no holiday comes as
charged with meaning as Valentines Day. In honor of the encroaching
event (or perhaps as a form of pedagogical acquiescence to its impas-
sioned hold on girls imaginations), the girls were shown the George Roy
Hill film, A Little Romance (1979). Lauren, the films twelve-year-old
heroine, experiences first love with a French boy, Daniel. The class dif-
ferences between the two (Lauren is the daughter of a wealthy American
couple living in Paris; Daniel is the resourceful son of a taxi driver who
jilts customers by tinkering with his cab meter) are elided by their shared
high IQs. The two concoct a scheme to run off to Venice and kiss in a
gondola under a bridge at sunset, marking their love as eternal. Their ad-
ventures prior to this more dramatic conclusion run the usual gamut of
sneaking out to the movies together and stealing kisses in the subway.
Laurens close friend, Natalie, voices an underlying theme of the liminal
qualities of pre-teen sexuality. As she and Lauren, visiting the Louvre,
stare upward at the male genitals of a Greek statue, Natalie asks her
friend furtively, Have you done it? Lauren fakes a response (Sure, all
the time), though on another occasion she recoils when Daniel and his
working-class buddy sneak Lauren in the back door of a theater to watch
a porn film. Running away in tears from the films portrayal of adult
sexuality, Lauren voices a middle-class ideology of love: She yearns for a
romantic soul mate.
When asked to rate A Little Romance (on a scale of 15 stars), its
stronghold on the girls imaginations was apparent. Alison gave the film
a rating of 98 stars, Mariah the even more hyperbolic rating of 5 million
stars. However, the girls readings of this cinematic text also revealed dis-
tinctive ways in which coming of age in Lower Bond Hill became layered
with the screen images of Lauren and Daniel. To appropriate Stuart
Halls (1989) terminology, the girls produced negotiated readings in
which distinctive ways of living femininity and class were voiced in rela-
tion to the text.
Alison, who had proclaimed the scene in the porn film theater as her
favorite, identified with Lauren. Alison was taken with Laurens response
to the porn film. In her summary of the scene, Alison recounted a girls
shocked reaction to seeing a screen couple (described as a girl and boy
in Alisons portrayal) doing blah blah blah.
An I dont know what was goin on in the movie but the girl
[Lauren] said, it was like, it was like a porno movie, about this
girl and boy blah blah blah
An the girl [Lauren] took off runnin outside and was cryin
An Daniel took off runnin outside with er
An he was talkin to her
An he said somethin to her like, its just makeup or something
like that
He said Id never do that to you
Mariah also identified with Lauren. What she offered as a plausible

reason for this identification was an experience that she claimed to have
had. Like Lauren, she drank alcohol with her boyfriend. In A Little Ro-
mance, Daniel sneaks some champagne up to Laurens room on her thir-
teenth birthday, where his working-class buddy (a cigarette-smoking,
cussing sidekick) plasters a poster from the porn film on the walls and
dances suggestively with Natalie, Laurens naive girlfriend. Mariah re-
membered a scene from when I was little that she claimed was similar:
On my birthday, we were playing around, and, . . . this boy I know, he
got some beer. Her story ends with a coda that may have been truth or
fiction, or perhaps a little of each: My mom found his [the boys] picture
on the wall and she tore it. Prior to that, she suggests, the two went a
little too far, a theme that contrasts with Alisons reading of Daniels
romantic assurances.
On the surface, it would seem as though Alisons stronger embrace of

middle-class girlhood identities would set the stage for a more successful
experience in school. Though true in part, just beneath the surface, dis-
cernible only with the passage of time and within an alternative pedagog-
ical environment, lie the more complex truths of how both Mariah and
Alison struggle in contradictory landscapes of class.
We are in an after-school meeting in early December, and the girls have
made the decision to cuss. It started when a graduate research assistant driv-
ing one of the girls home cussed in her car when nearly hit by a police car on
a high-speed chase. Fucking ass were the words that slipped out. The fol-
lowing week, she shared a personal narrative where she talked about her
right to cuss. The girls followed suit with their own decision to cuss.
Mariah and Alison have, along with the other girls, been working on
narrative and photographic compositions about My Life as a Girl. With
the addition of cuss words seem to come the undercurrents of life in Lower
Bond Hill. Mariah writes simply in her journal, It fucking sucks being a
girl. Alison composes a lengthier story about how she cannot leave her
house alone and about how angry this makes her feel. My life as a girl
stinks because my brothers get all the damn attention like going to the
country with my papa and I dont because my papa said its too cold down
there, so I have to go to the damn country in the summer. And I am not al-
lowed out of the fucking house unless I go with my aunt. I think it also
stinks because I dont get to go to the skating rink with my aunt because
Mama says that me and her talk to boys. So in my head I get mad and say
that fucking stinks because I dont talk to boys and she dont either.
If one peels away the surface veneer of a middle-class schoolgirl iden-
tity most successfully enacted by Alison, suddenly the voices of both Ali-
son and Mariah ring with the language of Lower Bond Hill. Cussing is one
way of naming ones identity as a girl in this distinctive landscape, in con-
trast to the middle-class school setting where this is viewed as being foul-
mouthed. These girls life stories also exude anger, which is more readily
associated with Mariah. In the classroom, it is often she who loses it
ending up in detention, having missed school outings, and generally get-
ting reprimanded by adults. And yet, both girls voice anger in their stories
about girlhood. Why does life as a girl, to use their language, suck?
In the bitching session that ensues (as the girls like to use the word
bitch to describe women and girls and their unique styles of complaining
and arguing), the girls raise the issues that constrain and confine them in a
neighborhood characterized by patriarchal relations. When adult siblings,
neighbors, or relatives bring young children to visit, you get laid off with
the kid (as Mariah explains it). Moreover, boys get not only more atten-
tion but also more material goods. In Mariahs words, over Christmas
what she got was jack shit, whereas boys more often get what they want.
Deeply connected with the words, however, were the lives that the
girls lead outside of the walls of Linden School, lives that must be more
psychologically influential than any official curriculum. As the language
of the after-school program was opened up to working-class language, so
too did neighborhood stories begin to reveal aspects of the girls lives that
had remained hidden. It was as though, as James Paul Gee (1996) has ar-
gued about language, the power of cussing carried with it an identity
toolkita discourse deeply intertwined with the girls neighborhood
lives. As the girls spoke, using a language more heavily inflected with
these forms, stories of pain and loss also emerged as shared threads of
neighborhood consciousness.
Both girls, we were to learn, had lost or been separated from their
birth-mothers due to the drug culture that has now reached into neigh-
borhoods such as Lower Bond Hill. In December, Mariah, teary-eyed and
exhausted in the classroom, barely holding it together during a language
arts lesson, said she had learned that her birth-mother (who had lived in
a rural Appalachian location) had died from a drug overdose. Later the
same day, Mariah rocked back and forth on the floor in grief, her head in
her hands, as the girls began to map out narratives about their lives as
girls. In March, both Alison and Mariah sobbed after a graduate research
assistant shared a story about the heroin-related death of a family mem-
ber. Alison had much earlier in the year been taken away from her
mother, who had herself become an addict. The two girls sat on the floor,
their backs to the wall, crying. Alison sobbed, I want my mom back.
After a long discussion of how drugs had taken their mothers from them,
Mariah gave Alison, still in tears, a kiss on her forehead.
What does it mean, then, to grow up as a young girl in Lower Bond
Hill? For these two girls at least, it means living a life in school that is partly
concealedthe life associated with loved ones, anger, and sometimes frag-
mentation as the darker edges of neighborhood life reach into their homes.
It also means living a neighborhood life of resiliency, devotion to family,
and spirituality that provides stability and strong support. The speaking
voices and life experiences of these two girls run deep, as Flannery OCon-
nor might arguea reading of them must seek meanings that are under the
surface. One girl, Mariah, in the ways described by Bakhtin in his writings
on the carnivalesque, uses subversive language and female sexuality to sub-
vert the official discourses of an authoritarian school setting. Another girl,
Alison, appears to have appropriated norms for being a good schoolgirl.
However, just beneath the surface of that seeming success lies the fragmen-
tation of identity that Valerie Walkerdine (1990) has described as splitting.
In the classroom, unlike Mariah, she keeps her mouth shut.
It may be, however, that working-class forms of language and
identity hold as much power for Alison as they seemingly do for
Mariah. Alisons cinematic reading of an ideology of romance and love

in A Little Romance, for instance, may show the relevance for her life
as a leading neighborhood narrative for teen women: partnering and
having babies of ones own. She evinces both fascination and familiar-
ity with the new babies coming into her household and into the homes
of kin living in Kentucky. She holds an aunts new baby, feeds him, and
burps him. She carries around a picture of the newborn, showing it to
teachers and peers.
How will these two girls fare as they enter their teen years? Alison
and Mariah are both girls who are easily drawn into literature and writ-
ing. They are smart, creative, and articulate. The tension for both girls
seems to lie with the meanings of the language, identity, and values of
Lower Bond Hill in a school setting where some of these would not be
valued. For Mariah, her strong attachment to neighborhood values and
language could easily preclude a productive future in school. Mariahs
difficulties are attributed to her (alone) rather than to her distinctive way
of living class in a classroom setting. For Alison, her attachment to a cul-
ture of romance (to appropriate Angela McRobbies apt phrasing) and fa-
miliarity with babies could drive a wedge between her primary desires
and a deeper attachment to literature, writing, or other areas of learning.
For now she seems content, though worried. Each school year in the
spring she waits anxiously, in the hopes that she has passed her reading
proficiency test.
Language is powerful in the classroom. It provides a means of nam-
ing ones identity and of having ones identity named by others. It pro-
vides a way of narrating ones place in existing figured worlds, in the
sense used by Dorothy Holland, William Lachicotte Jr., Debra Skinner,
and Carole Cain (1998), and of imagining new figured worlds. It pro-
vides a way to bitch, to articulate anger, to argue, and to love. Finally,
and perhaps most hopefully, language can become a means for empow-
erment, a way of gaining new kinds of voices and consciousness.
Over the course of weeks and months, the two girls whose voices and
lives have been chronicled here experienced a shift in consciousness that
is deeply educational. This could be most readily observed with Mariah,
the older of the two and, at least in the after-school setting, a girl seen by
Alison and others as a leader. The Im angry and resistant voice that
has been her frequent demise in the classroom has, in the after-school
program, shifted to an Im angry and empowered voice. While mo-
ments of intense feeling have come with the words connected to the girls
neighborhood lives, these seem more like healing moments leading to un-
derstanding rather than to moments of outright resistance. As I have
begun to hear the articulations of life in Lower Bond Hill in the girls
voices, they have opened hidden parts of their lives to me. It creates the
possibility for a pedagogy that is answerable to the students life lan-

guage, experiences, imaginations, and hopes for their futures. As this
after-school literacy project has evolved, so has the curriculum itself. The
girls in this project have begun work on a magazine that will feature
realistic and fictional writing about their lives as girls.
Answering the Voices of Girls Living in Poverty

The call to create more critical, radical, or activist pedagogies has become
a familiar refrain in some circles of the educational research community.
What some scholars have termed the new literacy research, is connected
to the goal of helping teachers, researchers, and students unpack the
forms of language and practice that replicate existingand sometimes
inequitablesocial relations.
Our work is indebted to this emerging interdisciplinary field of new
literacy studies. At the same time, our efforts look back to earlier exem-
plars of pedagogical activism in which there was a long-term commitment
to shaping practice in response to a distinctive social, historical, and ma-
terial landscape, and in dialogue with the speaking subjects in those land-
scapes. The Piedmont mill towns where Shirley Brice Heath (1983)
connected ethnographies of communication with teaching innovations,
and the hill country of eastern Tennessee where Myles Horton founded a
school for labor organizers and civil rights activiststhese were responses
to particular social geographies and histories. In these and in other simi-
lar exemplars, the critical part of critical pedagogies evolved out of
what Mikhail Bakhtin, in his early philosophical essays, referred to as an-
swerability. These educational efforts entailed discursive responses to par-
ticular kinds of language and narratives of experience, and responsibility
toward the subjects whose lives were impacted by educational practice.
The ethnography and activist teaching described in this chapter is fo-
cused on young students, not on the adult laborers or peasants associated
with the work of critical educators such as Freire and Horton, nor the
university students associated with educators such as bell hooks (1994).
The goals of this work shift slightly when educating children who have
not sought assistance to overcome oppressive hegemonic relations, but in-
stead have been sought out by researchers and advocates such as the two
of us. More limited in scope, the aims of our teaching have been to en-
gage girls in meaningful pedagogy that will aid their emotional and psy-
chological attachment to school and to academic practices and to create
an exemplar of critical practice that could have wider implications for the
education of girls living in poverty.
Girls growing up in neighborhoods such as Lower Bond Hill are com-
ing of age amid exciting forms of hybridity and global change, and amid
troubling social realities connected with a poverty that is concentrated and

isolated. Part of our attempt to understand the psychological implications
of growing up in this unique enclave of poverty has entailed a writing
focus on the lived experiences and speaking voices of girlsCadence,
Heather, Alison, and Mariah. This analysis has drawn on literature and
on the literary arts of writing, as well as on the feminist and materialist
psychological theory developed by Walkerdine and her colleagues.
Stories and analyses of how class is lived by young girls have revealed
layers of complexity that defy the reductive educational fixes now in vogue.
The rhetoric of parental involvement doesnt match the experiences of
Heather and Cadence whose mothers are clearly involved in the literacy de-
velopment of the girls. The belief that becoming somebody different within
school spaces will promote academic success also fails to explain the con-
tinuing vulnerabilities of Heather and Alisonthe two good girls who
work hard to be the successful student their teacher expects them to be
but who also have hopes and dreams for a future that dont coincide with
images of academic success in the United States. Raising standards, teach-
ing more skills, regulating progress with numerous formal evaluations,
and training parents to work with their children will not meet the more
complex needs of girls living poverty if they are to successfully position
themselves in the twenty-first-century workforce. If these girls are expected
to bridge the social class divide and to break the cycle of poverty in their
families, they must be actively engaged in constructing identities that are re-
flective of their community (and in the case of these four girlstheir moth-
ers), but they must also be attached to academic practices.
Understanding that one can construct such a hybrid identity be-
gins with opening up school spaces where home identities (including lan-
guage practices and various ways of being) are genuinely valued and
perceived as valuable resources. Cadence and Mariah share an attitude
that reflects an assertive in-your-face working-poor identity. In an alter-
native pedagogy, their attitudes were used as powerful tools to begin con-
structing new identitieshybrid identities that dont shed the discourses
formed within intimate relations of home and family. Heather and Alison
perform identities closely aligned with community practices within an al-
ternative pedagogical spaceidentities that they felt needed to be left be-
hind as they crossed the threshold to school. Hybrid identity work
continues for Heather and Alison too, as these seemingly successful stu-
dents tease apart their class-complicated future aspirations that include
having babies and getting jobs.
In Wendy Luttrells study of two groups (rural and urban) of women
returning to school to obtain a high school diploma, bad attitudes were
used by twelve of the fifteen urban women as an explanation of why they
werent suited for school (1997, p. 63). This attitude was perceived as
a character trait that interfered with their academic success. The remain-
ing women who described themselves as good students felt they had to si-
lence their own voices in order to be successful in school. One woman
stated: I learned at a young age to button my lip. . . . My sister couldnt
put up with it and she didnt do well; I guess you could say it was more
my style to take it, so I did real well in school(p. 63). Doing well in
school, however, is relative and perceived through class-specific webs of
understanding. This woman was in an adult basic education class with
the goal of achieving a high school diploma. Her notion of having done
well in school does not coincide with the concept of doing well in school
for upper classes in the United States.
Are Alison and Heather more apt to take it from teachers? Are Ca-
dence and Mariah not able to put up with it? Whatever route the girls
take, traditional schooling practices would not be aimed at changing the
realities of their class oppression. This fact illuminates the imagined di-
chotomy of good girl and bad girl and problematizes the privileging
of one over the other within school settings. For both, their futures look
bleak without serious change in pedagogical focus.
Contemporary discourses of achievement and accountability in U.S.
schools do not address students as classed and gendered subjects. An al-
ternative pedagogy that is answerable to the social, emotional, material,
psychological, and linguistic specificities of high-poverty girls lives must
be in place if these girls are to construct a deep attachment to school and
to academic practices. Such an attachment could lead to the completion of
high school and to the pursuit of postsecondary options that hold the pos-
sibilities of changing the material futures of girls who live in poverty.
Though small in scope, our case studies are powerful in suggesting that
such pedagogical change is possible in the language arts classroom. The
speaking voices of working-poor girls and women can help keep the con-
creteness of their experiences and desires at the center of similar pedagog-
ical efforts. As Cadences mother so eloquently put it: Let her teach you.
Notes
The research described in this chapter has been supported in part through an
AERA/OERI research grant and through funds from The Sociological Initiatives
Foundation and from the Martha Holden Jennings Foundation.
1. For examples of this work from the United Kingdom, see McRobbie
(1991/2000); Reay (1997, 1998, 2000); Skeggs (1997); Steedman (1982, 1994);
Walkerdine (1988, 1990); Walkerdine and Lucey (1989); and Walkerdine, Lucey,
and Melody (2001).
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Walkerdine, V. and Lucey, H., 1989. Democracy in the kitchen: Regulating
mothers and socializing daughters. London: Virago Press.
Walkerdine, V., Lucey, H. and Melody, J. 2001. Growing up girl: Psychosocial
explorations of gender and class. New York: New York University Press.
Williams, V. B. 2001. Amber was brave, Essie was smart. New York: Scholastic.
4
MARGINALIZATION AND MEMBERSHIP
Jill Koyama and Margaret A. Gibson
In high schools across the United States adolescents enter into social rela-
tions with many others, some whose backgrounds are similar to their own
and others who are racially, ethnically, economically, culturally, and lin-
guistically different. There, they interact with one another, constructing
seemingly coherent systems of knowledge and engaging in complex pat-
terns of social activities across a wide range of possible memberships avail-
able to high school students. These interactions are especially complex
because of their placement within the social, economic, racial/ethnic, and
political characteristics of schools and also because students, as well as
teachers, administrators, and staff, bring to school their own histories and
life experiences. Students, increasing numbers of whom are economically
marginalized and recent immigrants, and teachers, who have attained
middle-class status and are mostly native-born Americans, are, together,
people who started out from very different places (literally or metaphor-
ically or both) [and] wind up occupying the same space (Ortner, 1996,
p. 182). And across the space, adolescents in essence make and re-
make themselves over and over again, refusing a singular or essentialist
label of identification and struggling against the processes of class deter-
minism. They are formed as social and cultural subjects as a result of their
backgroundstheir social class, their ethnicity, and their racebut also
as a result of their shared daily environment and interactions (2003,
p. 169). Through their encounters with one another in various school set-
tings, they construct themselves and the others repeatedly.
In this chapter we present a multifaceted account in which migrant stu-
dents of Mexican descent are categorically made, unmade, and remade by
interacting with each other, with nonmigrant students of Mexican-descent,
87
88 Jill Koyama and Margaret A. Gibson
with European American students, and with their teachers in a California

public high school that serves students from white middle-class and Mexi-
can-origin working-class and migrant families in nearly equal number. We
focus on migrant students as a subset of Mexican-descent students who
often find themselves in a state of being but not belonging (Gilroy, 2000,
p. 77) as they try to negotiate the fluid boundaries of sociocultural and eth-
nolinguistic identifications in schools. They are, in essence, betwixt and be-
tween, both novices and others who are on the edge of full participation
in the games of learning and being American high school students. They are
often singled out and labeled by white classmates as loners who keep to
themselves and as cholo/as or gang members by some teachers as un-
interested in school and academically unfocused, and by more assimi-
lated nonmigrant students of Mexican-descent as the schools underclass.
These perceptions of migrant students take various forms, and throughout
the chapter we show how the migrant Mexican students are constructed,
in the sense of being made and the sense of being made-up (Ortner, 1999),
and also how they simultaneously contribute to, and work against, the con-
structions. However, it is clear to us that in general the construction of
the marginalized othernessof the class, ethnic, and sociocultural
othersis not intrinsic to class, ethnic, or cultural differences between the
migrant students and their classmates, but rather one outcome of the ongo-
ing cultural work of becoming and being a high school student. Specifically,
the constructions of the migrants in this chapter, some seemingly congruent
with reality and others less so, are not, we argue, merely attributable to the
differences between the migrant and the white students, but rather are the
results of the overarching structures of inequality within a particular high
school, where white middle-class students and working-class Mexican-
descent students have their first sustained interactions with each other.
Framed by the particular social and cultural contexts and constraints of
the high school, the migrant students both struggle with the cultural process
of becoming an American high school student and also negotiate the unex-
pected side effects. Drawing on practice theory or perhaps more accurately
on theories of practice, we interrogate the ways in which the migrant stu-
dents are simultaneously constructed as economically, linguistically, and
ethnically marginalized others through their relations with their school,
most of their teachers, and with many of their classmatesand also how
they (re)make their own particular and academic identifications tangential
to the dominant through their participation with each other and staff in the
schools Migrant Education Program. We explore how class identifications,
always less visible, but intricately joined with race and ethnicity, operate in
the cultural beliefs and assumptions of teachers and students; manifest in the
ritualized practices of the school; and inform how individuals attend to, and
behave in, particular situations and contexts.
Marginalization and Membership 89
Theoretical Perspectives:
Theories of Practice
For a variety of reasons, different groups of peoplesome with more
power and resources than othersencounter, interact with, and confront
each other. Practice theory is a perspective that does not attend separately
to the dominant groups representations (and their power to constrain
others) or to the agency (and possibly resistance) of the subaltern sub-
jects, the members of the weaker group(s) in the encounters. It insists
on exploring the two in process, together, in tension. It focuses on the
highly patterned and ritualized behaviors and activities that underlie, or-
ganize, and often conserve systems, but also focuses on the ongoing en-
actment of these routines by actors who are shaped by the organizing
patterns and who struggle at some angle against them (Ortner, 1994,
p. 398). Relations between people and social structures are generated and
regenerated similarly and differently in practical action. And it is precisely
the ongoing matrices of interactions between the two, in particular mo-
ments and over time, on which theories of practice focus to account for
social reproduction and change.
Social structures are produced and reproduced, and ongoing day-to-
day human practices are constrained by structures, reproduce structures,
and struggle within structures (Ortner, 1994). There is thus a complex re-
lationship between human beings and social structures, one in which
structure is both a source and product of social practices (Giddens,
1979). According to Giddens, individuals and groups act as intentional,
reflective agents who have the capacity to see some aspects of the larger
social forces and workings of systems and also analyze their own actions
and practices. Their agency is not a series of discrete individual acts but
rather a continuous flow of conduct, a sort of situated practice to
which power is inextricably bound (pp. 5556).1 Thus, less advantaged
subjects in light of practice theory are people who need not be either com-
pliant with the determining structures of a system or oppositional to
them. They can simultaneously engage in activities and in practices, with-
out being social and cultural dupes or countercultural revolutionaries.
To frame the complex and social intentional actions and practices
of subjects in a life that is culturally organized and constructed, Ortner
(1996, 1999) develops the idea of serious games. Serious games cap-
ture the situational complexities of life that are precisely social, consisting
of webs of relationships and interactions between multiple, shiftingly
interrelated subjects and contexts, as well as consisting of the agency
of actors, who play multiple simultaneous games with intention, skill,
knowledge, and intelligence. S. B. Ortners serious game metaphor also
addresses power and situations of inequality that permeate social life. In
her most recent work, a study of social class within her own peer group,
her high school graduating class, Ortner (2003) chooses to use games
without the qualifying adjective serious to refer to what she considers
the slightly unreal world of school status games (p. 111) and reserves
serious games to distinguish the games of power and success in broader
sociocultural and political contexts.
And these games and the actors who play them are not isolated, not
abstracted from the continuum of time. Practice theory considers the his-
torical patterns and moments, as well as the more recent past within
which social practices are embedded. In this sense, it provides a method to
examine the ways in which the meanings of relations are derived from
changing social, economic, and cultural contexts across a continuum of
time. Practices are seen as long term. In particular, Sahlins (1981) demon-
strates that cultural construction of subjects and agents occurs in histori-
cal processes and that social practices are mutually constituting and
reflective of historical patterns. At particular moments, when peoples
interactions redefine them and their practices as different from that cul-
turally presupposed, then they have the ability to work back on the con-
ventional values (p. 35) of the system. When traditional or customary
social practices do not reproduce the usual or expected results or relations,
there are possibilities of redefinition, of remaking, and of reconstructing
both the disadvantaged and their practices. This failed reproduction,
according to Sahlins (p. 35), is change.
Paradoxically change is difficult ongoing social and cultural work
and yet [it] is largely a by-product, an unintended consequence of ac-
tion, however rational action may have been (Ortner, 1994, p. 395).
Human behavior is not obligated to conform to the class and cultural cat-
egories socially determined by their own cultural presuppositions
(Sahlins, 1981, p. 67). The effect of putting culture into practice can re-
sult in something that is not always pre-given, not always expected or
usual. There can be a reworking of sorts of new relationships through
which practices come to mean something different as shown in the
work of Sahlins (1992), but the process of change is messy and there are
likely multiple slippages back into the usual (Ortner, 1999).
As Ortner makes clear both in her studies of gender making (1996),
mountaineering Sherpas (1999), and her high school graduating class
(2003), games are not discrete, isolated objects, but rather interpretations
of objects that are themselves parts of larger societal and cultural games.
In fact, there are multiple games being played simultaneously and partic-
ular actors may have various roles across a number of them at any one
time. There are games within games and players playing across multiple
social fields. There are also multitudes of rules, goals, and stakes for these
games. In this chapter, we rely upon the metaphor of games and (some-
times serious games) as a theoretical category to explore the ways in

which migrant students of Mexican descent are defined by the limiting
structures of their situations and are also intentional participants in both
creating and re-creating those situations. To attend accurately to the data,
we move beyond a kind of class determinism to explore both the social
constraints, such as ethnic stratification and class structures, and the ef-
forts by students and teachers who struggle against them. We look specif-
ically at the students school experiences at the level of gameswhat they
need to do (or not do) to be particular types of American high school stu-
dentsand we also make reference to the larger games of schooling, that
is, of the processes by which high schools push students into categori-
cal social identifications by obscuring class in favor of ethnicity and per-
sonal qualities, such as studious and hardworking.
The Study: Methodology and Setting

Hillside High School (HHS), a comprehensive public high school located
in the rolling hills above Californias central coast, draws students from
two distinct communities, Hillside and Appleton.2 Hillside is a predomi-
nantly white, middle- to upper-middle-class professional town where the
median family income is $73,515 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2002). Appleton
is a mostly Mexican and Mexican American working-class agricultural
town where the median family income for Mexican families living in and
near Appleton is estimated to be about $33,000.
Both Hillside and Appleton are part of a large unified school district
that serves over 19,000 students and is the fourth largest employer in the
county (Valley Unified School District Homepage). Hillside High and Ap-
pleton High are the only two comprehensive high schools in the district.
Appleton High, a school built for 1,500 students houses over 3,000, even
though the district buses some 600 Appleton students per day to Hillside
High. HHS is currently, with the additional students from Appleton, also
overcrowded, serving 1,900 students in a school designed for 1,200. In
the fall of 1998, when this study began, the ninth grade at Hillside High
was nearly equally divided between non-Hispanic white students, who
comprised 44% of the class of 2002, and students of Mexican descent
(both parents of Mexican origin), who made up 42% of the freshman
class. Another 6% of the ninth-grade class had one parent of Mexican
origin, and the remaining 8% were Asian American, African-American,
non-Mexican Latino, or of mixed ethnic descent.
Beyond differences in ethnicity and residential neighborhood, students
from Appleton and Hillside vary dramatically in their socioeconomic
backgrounds and realities. Eighty-one percent of the Mexican-descent stu-
dents have two parents who emigrated from small towns in northern
Mexico with limited educational opportunities. As a result, more than half

of the Mexican parents and 73% of the migrant parents attended eight
years or less of school; only 6% of the migrant students had a parent who
had any postsecondary education. Contrastingly, 62% of the white Hill-
side students had at least one parent who had completed a four-year col-
lege degree and another 26% had a parent who had attended some
college. Furthermore, while many of the white students live in affluence,
most of the Mexican-descent students live near or below the poverty level.
Over half of the Mexican-descent students (including 61% of the migrant
students) receive free/reduced-price lunches and, based on the free-reduced
lunch rate of 80% at the elementary schools attended by most of these stu-
dents, more were eligible.
Not surprisingly, issues related to socioeconomic class are, according
to teachers and students, as salient as ethnic differences at HHS, but are
often obscured, perhaps lost in the discourses of race and ethnicity. As
noted by Ortner (2003), while class is often recognized in high schools
where students from different neighborhoods are brought together in one
setting, class boundaries become less visible than other sociocultural
boundaries, such as ethnicity. One HHS teacher remarked that over the
past twenty years he had witnessed increased class stratification at the
school, and another teacher repeatedly voiced concerns that the admin-
istration had focused too much on racial and ethnic conflicts between
Mexicans and non-Mexicans and not enough on classism.
Many of the interviewed students, both white and those of Mexican
descent, addressed the emphasis on money and socioeconomic class, not-
ing that what one wears becomes a status and class issue. And this was
one way in which class was often talked about at Hillside Highas a
comparison of goods, such as clothing and cars, or as an economic gra-
dation of privileges tied to ethnicity. In a related way, class becomes a
nearly hidden referent of ethnic categories used to describe differences
(Ortner, 2003). For example, one teacher explained: At Hillside High, if
you dont have money, you dont have crap. You [a Mexican-descent stu-
dent] enter the school grounds, passing the palm trees and the gate. You
see all the nice cars in the parking lots and then you arrive on the big yel-
low limousine [school bus].
This scenario pertains to the large majority of the Mexican-descent
students, 93% of whom are bused to HHS each day from their homes in
Appleton. In sharp contrast, only 26% of the white students ride the bus
to school, most as a matter of convenience rather than economic necessity.
In this chapter we focus on the school experiences of a specific subset
of Mexican-descent students at Hillside Highthe 160 migrant students
in the class of 2002, all of whom qualified for supplemental support
through the federally funded Migrant Education Program (MEP). Many

choose also to be members of the programs associated club, the Migrant
Student Association (MSA). Like the large majority of their non-migrant
Mexican-descent peers, these students face multiple obstacles to academic
engagement, chief among them a sense of not belonging in the larger
school culture (Gibson et al., 2004). But, in contrast to their non-migrant
Mexican-descent classmates, many also from working-class backgrounds,
the migrant students construct a space of belonging through MEP and
MSA in which they make successful academic identifications and re-
sist socioeconomic and cultural determinism by preparing themselves to
graduate from high school and in many cases to attend college. While the
large majority of these students families do not follow the agricultural
crops seasonally and instead live most of the year in Appleton, nearly half
of the students leave the area in December, many of them returning to
Mexico for a least a part of the time their parents are laid off during the
winter months, due to the lack of agricultural jobs. Roughly 20% of
these migrant students miss at least some days of school during January.
The findings we present here on migrant students of Mexican descent
emerged from a larger, four-year longitudinal and comparative study of
the entire class of 2002 at HHS conducted by a research team that in-
cluded Jill Koyama and that was led by Margaret A. Gibson. Data for the
study were compiled from many sources: interviews with students, teach-
ers, school staff, district administrators, and students parents; collections
of federal, state, district, and school documents; students class work and
academic records; observations and participation at informal after-school
gatherings, cocurricular events, teacher-training sessions, school board
meetings, district-wide convocations and seminars, departmental meet-
ings, pep rallies, athletic events, and graduation; and student surveys, in-
cluding one completed by 248 students of Mexican descent and 256
white students in the ninth grade, a follow-up survey completed by 272
of these same students in the eleventh grade, a survey on club and sports
participation completed by 170 students in grades 912, and a survey
given to 64 migrant students, all MSA members.
Interactions at Hillside High School

To capture the schooling experiences of the migrant students, it is impor-
tant to contextualize their situations within the practices, social struc-
tures, and overall stratification of the school and the communities it
serves; the larger cultural, ethnic, and economic differences between the
two towns; the historical ongoing tensions and conflicts between the
white students and those of Mexican descent that focus on ethnicity, but
also include class differences; and the position of the migrant students
within the larger Mexican-descent student population. We do not present
the story of the migrant students as mere encounter between two differ-
ent ethnic or social class groups, but rather as one deeply situated within
the multiplicities of the institutional practices and the ongoing social re-
lations and interactions within the high school during a particular time in
history, a time when there were active social movements aimed at dimin-
ishing either the presence or rights of Mexican immigrants in California.
Exploring how historically created conditions made it possible for the mi-
grant students to actively play or not play the game of becoming acade-
mically successful high school students contextualizes the agency exerted
by individual students.
Mexican Students Arrive at Hillside High School

Prior to the early 1990s when the district began busing Appleton students
to Hillside High in order to relieve severe overcrowding at Appleton
High, the HHS student body was predominantly white and middle to
upper middle class. Soon after the initial transfer of the Mexican-descent
students to HHS, many of the white parents began expressing concerns
that academic standards at the school, which is known for its excellent
college preparatory and Advanced Placement (AP) courses, had suffered.
During the early and mid-1990s, a vocal body of Hillside residents advo-
cated secession from the Valley Unified School District and pushed the
state to allow them to form their own separate school district, a district
that would (again) largely exclude Mexican students and serve predomi-
nantly middle- and upper-middle-class white students (for a further de-
scription of this movement, see Hurd, 2003). Although the movement to
secede has faded, in part due to district reorganization that gave the
schools in and around Hillside more local control, Hillside parents con-
tinue to make up the overwhelming majorities in HHSs Parent Teachers
Association (PTA), Site Council, and Boosters Club, thus exerting sub-
stantial influence, often in the form of middle- to upper-middle class cul-
tural capital, over the schools programs and practices.
Constructing Them: The Non-English Speakers

In California, a state that has traditionally experienced high immigration
from Mexico, the consequences of learning and speaking (or not learn-
ing and not speaking) English have emerged as important rallying points
not only in boundary maintenance, but also as a way of defining and in-
dexing us (those who fluently speak English) in comparison to them
(those who do not). Across the state, English monolingual ideology has
been repeatedly invoked to construct an American ethnicity (Ricento,
1998). During the 1980s and 1990s, a series of propositions that promote
the use of English and limit the rights of Mexican immigrants, many who
speak Spanish as their native (often only) language, were passed. In 1986,
California voters approved Proposition 63: English as the Official Lan-
guage. In 1994, Proposition 187 (parts of which were later overturned)
made undocumented immigrants ineligible for public social services, in-
cluding education; in 1996, Proposition 209, for all practical purposes,
repealed Affirmative Action policies in the state and public entities; and
in June 1998, Californians approved Proposition 227, which essentially
brought to an end bilingual education in public schools.
At Hillside High, as in schools throughout the state of California, the
propositions, which changed the rules and increased the stakes in the
game of learning English, have had a chilling effect on the education of
the students whose home language is other than English, which at HHS
means 91% of Mexican-descent students. The impact is even greater for
English learners, and at HHS 63% of the migrant students and 26% of
the nonmigrant Mexican-descent students in the Class of 2002 were des-
ignated as Limited English Proficient (LEP) on entering the ninth grade.
These students are placed for much, sometimes most of their school day
in English Language Development (ELD) and Sheltered or SDAIE (Spe-
cially Designed Academic Instruction in English) classes, creating in prac-
tice a pattern of segregation. This type of segregation, although troubling
to the teachers who teach English learners, is not readily changed. One
faculty member explained: Theres not any easy answer because we
still divide the kids by their language needs sometime during the day. . . .
we put them in SDAIE classes. We put them in ELD classes. Thats great,
and it gives them what they need academically, but it segregates them
from . . . the rest of the population.
At HHS, as in many other schools, being classified as LEP and placed
into ELD and SDAIE classes restricts students contact with native En-
glish-speaking students and, more importantly, creates both physical and
linguistic isolation and constructs non-English speakers as relative out-
siders. This resonates with the findings of Valds (2001), who points out
that even students who are being taught entirely in English have very lit-
tle access to English (13) because of the segregation, in classes and
across campus, from their English-speaking peers (see also Hurd, 2004;
Mendoza-Denton, 1999).
In addition, there are restrictions and practices in certain classrooms
that define when Spanish is and is not spokenand that in effect devalue
the speaking of Spanish. For instance, in one reading skills class the teacher
discouraged the use of Spanish by students for their own good. He re-
marked: [If I dont] do bell assignments, they engage in social behavior
that may not be appropriate. They revert to Spanish, and then I have to get
them back again [into English]. Many at HHS fail to recognize the value
of Spanish for the Mexican-descent students. For example, 60% of the
white students surveyed in the ninth grade said that Mexican students
would fit in better if they didnt speak Spanish to each other; only 19%
said they liked being at a school where so many people speak Spanish.
Some teachers also commented that if the Mexican students would learn
English and refrain from speaking Spanish they could become successful
and fit in better at Hillside, an apparent assumption being that speaking
Spanish precluded the learning of English.
In general, English learners felt neither encouraged nor supported
to speak English. Even students designated as Fluent English Proficient
(FEP) expressed hesitancy about speaking English in certain situations.
Ronaldo, a migrant student who is fluent in both Spanish and English, ex-
plained that he spoke little in his classes because of his embarrassment in
speaking English in front of white students; our observations of him in
classes confirmed his comments. Many others, including some of the mi-
grant students who were taking the toughest AP classes and were on
track for college, reported a similar reluctance to speak out in class for fear
of mispronouncing some word in English and embarrassing themselves, or
possibly even subjecting themselves to some more overt form of ridicule by
classmates (Gibson, 2005). Those who were still learning English were even
more unwilling to speak out in class, but not necessarily in other settings.
For example, a handful of Mexican-descent males who spoke very little in
their ELD classes, felt free speaking English to one another outside of class.
One of the students explained that speaking English outside of class was
less dangerous than in class, where he would be judged by the teacher and
by better English speakers. Another English learner, who consistently in-
sisted on using Spanish in his ELD classeswhen he could have attempted
Englishsuggested that he did so to confuse (mess up) the teachers. Ac-
tions such as these of resisting or not-learning English reinforced some
teachers perceptions that Mexican students werent particularly interested
in being educated. However, student reluctance to use English in class, or
outside, may have other very different meanings. It may reflect fear of em-
barrassment or ridicule, since the school has not created safe environments
for students to make mistakes, which of course is a necessary part of learn-
ing, or it may reflect actual resistance to learning English and assimilation
into American culture due to the students wish to maintain a strong Mexi-
can identity (Mendoza-Denton, 1999). English may be seen as replacing
Spanish and, thus, viewed by Mexican-descent students as a form of sub-
tractive acculturation (Gibson, 1998). It may also indicate their refusal to

play in the game of conformity, a form of play set by, and mostly followed
by, the middle-class white students.
Belonging in Schools
Fitting in and belonging for Mexican-descent students is difficult given
that students who live in Hillside in essence own the high school. It be-
longs to them and they know it. They form the dominant groups on cam-
pus (Gibson et al., 2004). Teachers confirm this view. At Hillside
High, one teacher explained, white students occupy the space. It is
their space. They are comfortable. They fill it. They are confident. They
are conversing. They are at ease. In contrast, the same teacher noted that
for students of Mexican descent theres a feeling of otherness, especially
with the limited English speakers and migrant students who come and go
and have to work much harder to belong, to fit in, to make their places of
comfort at school, if they can. It is as though there are two schools, one
attended by Mexican students and one by the white students. Thus,
within Hillside, social contact between students from different ethnic and
class backgrounds is clearly organized and limited. In the game of over-
coming such organization, of belonging, Mexican students struggle to
play, perhaps even struggle to become legitimate players.
The intraschool segregation is firmly established in the use of physi-
cal space on campus. White students occupy the center spaces of the HHS
campus, especially the central courtyard referred to as the Quad, while
Mexican-descent students almost exclusively congregate in the periphery
of the campus, in particular, in and around the building referred to by
many white students as Mexicoville because it houses both the Mi-
grant Education Program and the Spanish for Spanish Speakers class-
rooms. As one teacher observed, Mexican-descent students hang out
around corners, because, as this same teacher concluded, they find com-
fort and safety along the margins. It is, she explained, the only place left
for them as no other settings have been purposefully created for them by
the school.
Other teachers, as well as many of the white students, believe that
Mexican students segregate themselves due to their inability or unwill-
ingness to integrate and participate and their strong tendency to hang
out with their own people. This view of Mexican-descent students was
the focus of an article in the student newspaper titled Students Practice
Voluntary Segregation (November/December 1998). In it, Mexican stu-
dents were said to prefer to be with one another and thus chose not to
enter the Quad. The ideas expressed in this article, like those of many of
the teachers and white students, constructed Mexican-descent youth as

students who preferred to remain separate, to be with their own people
who, in reality, did not wish to mix with white students or to participate
in the social life of the high school. Migrant students perhaps fared even
less well, being seen as students who not only wanted to socialize with
other Mexicans, but in particular, wanted to hang out with poor wet-
ties, a slang reference to the derogatory term of wetbacks used by some
white students to signify Mexican immigrants, usually poor, who cross
the Rio Grande into the United States.
In sharp contrast, the large majority of Mexican students explain that
they feel uncomfortable hanging out in the Quad, many noting great dis-
comfort even in passing through this area of campus because, they told us,
white students made them feel like they dont belong there. Some described
specific and repeated incidences of being verbally assaulted; food was even
hurled at them by white students. As one eleventh-grade migrant student
put it: Hanging out in the Quad is not okay if youre Mexican. It isnt like
really a place for Mexicans. Bad, really bad things happen there. . . . They
[the white students] make fun of the way you look, like the things you
wear, and the food we eat, and speaking Spanish, and well, it isnt worth it
to me, even if I am hungry and want to cross it to get some lunch fast. . . .
Or even if I want to listen to bands [which often play during lunchtime ac-
tivities staged there], I walk around, you know, the back way . . . I hang out
in the back just to hear, but mostly I just dont go there much.
Others said much the same, noting that The Quad is only [for]
white people, that white students stare at you as you walk by, and
they judge you a lot. It is clear that many of the students of Mexican
descent dont feel that they belong in the Quad and certainly, from
their accounts, they do not seem to be welcomed. It is unclear, however,
to what extent the students have internalized what Bourdieu (1984) refers
to as the choice of the necessary, where ones experience of social sta-
tus, class, and cultural distinction makes certain behaviors unthinkable.
In this sense, the students may be eliminating the option of going to the
Quad because it has already been refused to them.
White students recognize the segregation of spaces on campus and
the social divisions it represents. They, too, commented on feeling dis-
comfort walking through parts of campus where large numbers of Mexi-
can students hang out. For the most part, though, their discomfort does
little to limit their sense of belonging or their overall social and educa-
tional opportunities. It certainly does little, if anything, to challenge
or jeopardize their class or social status. As one teacher noted, white
students tend to project an attitude of privilege and ownership, with
many questioning why Mexican students even attend HHS or, alterna-
tively, indicating that their presence is unimportant to them. As one white

student explained, if the Mexican students stay along the backs of the
buildings when were having our activities going on in the Quad, most of
us dont even pay attention to them.
Moreover, the two groups of students often attend different classes,
white students heavily represented in the college preparatory and AP
classes, while Mexican students are overrepresented in the basic skills,
general education, and English language development classes. Mexican-
descent students are also underrepresented in school-wide events, student
government, and extracurricular school activities. As one migrant student
put it, if youre Mexican, the biggest challenge [at HHS] is getting in-
volved. In the ninth grade, for example, only 11% of the Mexican-
descent students were involved in a school-sponsored sport compared to
52% of their white classmates. For those who completed four years at
HHS, sports participation rose to 30% for the Mexican-descent students
and 72% for white students. Club membership follows a similar pattern.
Only 6% of the Mexican-descent students joined a club their freshman
year, compared to 22% of the white students. Club participation in-
creases each year for both groups, but Mexican-descent students mainly
join clubs such as MSA, where all or most of the members are Mexican
and Spanish speaking. Those who joined other clubs were usually third-
generation students whose families had middle-class jobs, who fit easily
into mainstream school activitiesand for whom, because of their class
irregardless of their ethnicity, such activities were designed.
Migrant students in particular and Mexican-descent students in gen-
eral report many reasons for their low participation in sports including
cost, lack of transportation, after-school jobs, and family responsibilities,
but added to these economic reasons is the fact that many Mexican-
descent students believe they will not fit in. One boy, a migrant student,
explained: Sports are, well, made for the white students and white
coaches and well, white parents, families. I mean how many Mexicans do
you see surfing or playing tennis or whatever. I mean many of us play
soccer and we are good at it, and we hoop [play basketball] at our
houses, but not at school. No. And we dont really feel comfortable play-
ing because we know that the sports and groups are not made for us.
They [the coaches] dont even like try to get us to play. . . . They, well no
one really sees us as athletes or surfers or what.
In short, the students of Mexican descent do not feel that they be-
long. They do not feel welcome on athletic teams and hence do not play,
thus helping to solidify a perception of Mexicans as non-jocks or not
interested in participation. In this sense, they disengage from participat-
ing in what they knew were literally (and metaphorically) the games
played by mostly middle-class white students and by some middle-class,

more assimilated Mexican students. The less assimilated Mexican and
migrant students disengagement constructs participation in extracurric-
ular activities, especially athletics, as a particularly middle-class game.
Ethnic Tensions: Making the Foreign Other

Very few of the Mexican-descent students who attend HHS participate in
gangs, although they are frequently referred to by white students, in jest
and otherwise, as cholo/as, gang members, or as gang wanna-bes.
Still, overall, students and teachers indicate that ethnic tensions, includ-
ing gang violence and physical fights between Mexican and non-Mexi-
cans, or among Mexican students, have diminished since the mid-1990s.
When asked about gangs, one teacher suggested that while only a hand-
ful of the Mexican-descent students were active gang members, she un-
derstood why they might like to reify the mainstream belief that they
were affiliated with gangs. She explained:
[S]ome of the students who are non-academically oriented can enjoy

the rub off of coolness of being seen as a gang member because you can
make yourself look gangish if youre not. And, well, that gives you a bit of
control and power in perception from the white students that you
wouldnt, you know, normally get because youre a geek. But youre
wearing some big ole pants and a big ole shirt and so suddenly theyre a
little scared of you. It gives you a sense of power that you dont usually
walk around with when you know the white students are walking around
feeling powerful. Well, not so much powerful, but feeling confident and
comfortable that this is my space and Im supposed to be here. . . .
Others, who seemed less insightful than this teacher, let their percep-
tions (and possibly fears) about students gang affiliations guide their
daily behaviors and routines on campus. A teacher recounted the follow-
ing dialogue: I heard a comment in one of the classes, . . . when I was in
one of the Anglo classes, and students were saying, Im not going to that
bathroom. Its a gang bathroom, and I thought you know there arent
that many bathrooms for students and its like the only bathroom in the
entire upper campus. Its not a gang bathroom, but there appears to be
Spanish students hanging out and using it, so it must be a gang bathroom
obviously. I thought how absurd.
Another teacher and a few white students, in contrast, confided to us
that they never used that bathroom, not because they thought it was a
gang bathroom, which they agreed would be an absurd designation,
but because they had seen Mexican gang members hanging out there in
between classes.
Still, despite a paucity of actual gang members or gang violence, vis-

ible signs of covert racism and ethnic tensions persist, and conflicts over
celebrating Mexican holidays or special occasions highlight the ethnic di-
visions. Only 16% of the white students surveyed in the eleventh grade
indicated that Cinco de Mayo and Mexican Independence Day should be
celebrated at HHS, and in 1999 members of the South Side Surfers, a
white clique, were accused by the school administration of planning to
disrupt the schools Cinco de Mayo celebration (HHS Newspaper, 1999).
In 2000, over half of the student body skipped school on May 5 due to
planned Cinco de Mayo events, either not wishing to participate, using
this as an excuse to skip school, or claiming that their parents kept them
home to avoid conflict, or in the case of many Mexican-descent students,
choosing to spend the day instead at Appleton High to participate in its
more genuine and conflict free celebration (Regional Newspaper, 2000).
The troubles that erupt on these days are not unidirectional. For ex-
ample, during the Mexican Independence Day Assembly in 1998, a vocal
handful of Mexican-descent students booed the American flag and the
National Anthem (HHS Newspaper, 1998). Yet many Mexican-descent
students view these occasions as the only time when the school creates a
space and time for them to publicly celebrate their ties to Mexico and to
Mexican culture. As one Mexican-descent female student commented fol-
lowing the 2001 Cinco de Mayo celebration at HHS: They [the white
students] were dying because we brought the Mexican flag over. . . .We
are proud were Mexican. . . . It also bothers some white students that
first- and second-generation students of Mexican descent typically self-
identify as Mexican rather than as Mexican American or American.
Combined, these incidences and the multiple published reports generated
from them (or perceptions about them) give rise to the definition of the
Mexican-descent students as anti-American, the construction of the
foreign others.
In addition to nasty incidents that predictably occur at school-spon-
sored (and generally poorly planned) celebrations of Mexican Indepen-
dence Day and Cinco de Mayo,3 there are constant small, visible, and
enduring symbols of ethnic tensions on the Hillside High campus. Con-
federate flags, White Power notations, and racist remarks, including the
juxtaposed statements, Mexicans suck and Whites suck more, are
engraved in the steel door of a student bathroom, and similar graffiti ap-
pears intermittently in common areas such as the library bulletin boards,
and on personal items, including students notebook covers.
It seems likely that the behavior of the students of Mexican descent are
the result of individuals resisting the hegemonic system of the school, of re-
fusing to play the games of assimilation, and of acting white. Practice
theory provides a way of recognizing the importance of these individuals
who exert their agency and who create a whole variety of counterforces
(Ortner, 2003, p. 79) that were underestimated both by Bourdieu (1978,
1984) and Karl Marx (1965 [1867]) in their theories of social stratification
and class struggles. The individuals who struggle against assimilation may
or may not change their own academic outcomes. Many do, but the out-
comes for some who refuse to play the games of assimilation look similar
to those who had no access to the games or who played faithfully by the
rules, but who failed anyway. However, in the aggregate, the counterforces
created by the struggles inform and construct multiple and varied alterna-
tive pathways to positive academic outcomes that may over time, impact
the rules that secure hegemonic practices in schools.
Academic Performance
Recent scholarship positively links a students sense of belonging and ac-
ceptance in school to increased academic engagement and performance
(Gibson et al., 2004; Goodenow and Grady, 1993; Osterman, 2000). The
converse is also true; students who feel marginalized in school perform
dont perform as well, and the national pattern of low academic attain-
ment among Mexican-origin youths is reflected at Hillside High. While al-
most all white students on entering the ninth grade take either algebra or
geometry, and a third are placed in accelerated English, only half of the
Mexican-descent ninth graders are placed in college preparatory classes.
Many of the white students, who are well prepared academically, also ex-
hibit confidence in the classroom. One teacher, who observed a ninth-
grade English honors class, had this to say: They [the students] were
running the class . . . they just ran it. The teacher was in the room, but I
didnt really see any needed interaction. They had control. They went
from one to the other. They did (the) questioning of each other, support
for one another. They fed food to them (their classmates) when one of the
presentations had some food associated with it. They organized that and
got it all out. They were just totally running it in a confident way where
everybody was moving forward with the academics that way because it
was a communal expectation of hey, this is what were going to do . . . it
was the middle class thing to do and they knew it, knew it well.
This class was made up entirely of white students, all of whom pos-
sessed the cultural capital needed to succeed and provided to them by their
middle-class upbringings. At HHS, students of Mexican descent do not
run classes. In fact, the few who do enroll in AP or honors classes (with
the notable exception of AP Spanish) remain nearly silent. One teacher ob-
served this to be the case with her teachers aide, a Mexican-descent stu-
dent who did not participate in his chemistry class. The student explained
that he felt uncomfortable talking in a class where he was the only Mexi-
can. Numerous other Mexican students, even third-generation students
who were fluent in English, echoed this sentiment (Gibson, 2005).
The pattern of low achievement and a sense of not belonging among
the Mexican-descent students persist over time. At the completion of the
ninth grade, the mean grade point average (GPA) for white students was
3.03 (on a 4.0 scale), yet for Mexican-descent students it was 2.09; 57%
of the white students but just 19% of the Mexican students had a GPA of
3.0 or better. By the end of the twelfth grade the gap remained even
though many of the Mexican-descent students who were struggling acad-
emically, had left HHS. A similar disparity emerges in terms of success-
fully completed college preparatory courses. Among the students who
graduated from HHS in June 2002, 64% of the white students compared
to just 21% of the Mexican-descent students had completed all the
courses required for admission to the University of California at Los An-
geles (UCLA) or California State University. Furthermore, only 59% of
the Mexican-descent students who entered HHS in August 1998 gradu-
ated from Hillside High four years later. Notably, however, 69% of mi-
grant students stayed at HHS and graduated from the twelfth grade,
compared to just 26% of the nonmigrant first- and second-generation
Mexican-descent students and 60% of the third generation Mexican-
descent students. In addition, 9% of the migrant students finished else-
where in the area, bringing the migrant student high school graduation
rate to 77%. Perhaps even more remarkable, 47% of those migrant stu-
dents with a ninth-grade GPA of 1.8 or lower graduated from Hillside
High, compared to just 11% of the nonmigrant students of Mexican ori-
gin and 13% of the white students with similar GPAs.
Paradoxically, while the migrant students at Hillside were exceeding
both Hillside graduation rates for Mexican-descent students and nation-
wide graduation rates for migrant students, teachers repeatedly deter-
mined migrant students to be unfocused, undisciplined, and lacking
command of the curricula materials. In one English Language Develop-
ment classroom, the teachers interactions with migrant students usually
began with a qualifying phase: I know you havent been here for most of
the year or you wont know this because I dont think you were here,
or just do what you can, but you wont know this material because you
werent here. This particular teachers perceptions was that the migrant
students trips to Mexico handicapped them in the game of being seri-
ous and focused high school students. Unfortunately, such construc-
tions were not only being made by this particular teacher. For example,
in one of the mathematics classes, a teacher accused a migrant student of
being uninterested in graduating because the student had traveled to
Mexico again over the winter break. Nonmigrant students of Mexican

descent in the same class told us that they hesitated to work on assigned
group projects with migrant students because who knows what they
learn there [in Mexico] and what theyve missed here [at HHS]. In fact,
the so-called uninterested migrant student was an officer in the Migrant
Student Association (MSA), had a cumulative GPA of 3.4, received an A
in the math course, and expected to attend UCLA. Thus, the perceptions
of this working-class migrant student were constructed more by the ne-
cessities of his familys class standing than by his actual achievement.
The Migrant Student Association

With its 110 members (20012002 school year) the Migrant Student As-
sociation at HHS is one of the high schools two largest student clubs. Its
mission is to promote higher education, celebrate cultural differences,
participate in school activities, and organize community service activi-
ties (MEP Handbook). MSA is designed to attend to the social and aca-
demic interests and needs of migrant students, but like other student
clubs at HHS, it is open to all students who wish to join, and a significant
28 percent of the members are nonmigrant, including three of the clubs
four officers (20012002 academic year). Although almost all MSA
members are students of Mexican-descent, there is considerable diversity
in the membershipfreshman to seniors, recent immigrants and U.S.
born, and students in the top quartile of their class to those with failing
grades. A few have gang ties, but only a few. Three-fourths are female
and two-thirds are seniors, drawn to the club in part because of its em-
phasis on helping students gain access to higher education. One third of
the seniors had a GPA of B- or better and, based on college preparatory
courses taken and completed, were also on track for admission into the
California four-year college system.
Participating in MSA
We look at the interactions between the MSA students and the clubs two
advisers within a context that is consciously designed to be supportive
and inclusive. We focus on how the MSA members mediate their overall
marginalization at HHS through their participation in MSA, and how
MSA is purposefully structured and maintained as a space where migrant
students belongwhere they are encouraged to integrate and solidify
their connections to each other, to academics, and to their Mexican her-
itage. Members and advisers work together to coconstruct academically
successful, belonging, and engaged students. Members create positive
Mexican and school identifications that seem improbable, if not impos-

sible, in other settings at HHS, given the larger social and cultural context
of the school and its patterns of segregation.
When asked why they participate in MSA and why the club is im-
portant to them, members offer a range of responses but they all revolve
around the sense of belonging and support the club provides. As one se-
nior explained: there arent a lot of places [at HHS] where Mexicans feel
accepted, and MSA has a type of environment where they make students
feel comfortable. Others said they participated because I like how this
club treats us equally. Its a special club for Mexican American stu-
dents; it makes us feel important. It allows people that are Mexican or
migrant to have somewhere to go.
Beyond the community created within the club, students also ex-
plained that through their participation in MSA they feel more connected
to the larger school, and are able to have a voice and an impact. We feel
wanted and we feel part of the school by doing activities with MSA, one
student commented. Others said, it makes us stronger. . . . Having the
MSA club is important because Latino students can learn how to become
more involved and comfortable with the campus. The migrant students,
most of whom refused to play in or felt marginalized by the more main-
stream organizations on campus, participated actively and enthusiasti-
cally in the MSA. It functioned as a countergroup that shared many of the
values of the other school-sponsored organizations and through MSA,
migrant students became active members of the school community, albeit
in lower-visibility activities.
The club also emphasizes leadership and giving back to ones com-
munity. The two often go hand-in-hand, as students develop leadership
skills as they plan and carry out a wide variety of service activities. Dur-
ing they 20012002 year these included erasing graffiti in their neighbor-
hoods, preparing food baskets for needy families at Thanksgiving,
organizing a clothing drive, and engaging in a pen-pal project with a
fourth-grade class to let them know that success in high school and col-
lege attendance were within their reach.
Literally and metaphorically, MSA provides a space, a playing field,
for the migrant students voices and actions. All MSA members are Span-
ish speakers, and they are free to use either Spanish or English or both
when talking to each other or to the clubs advisers about social and aca-
demic concerns and situations. One MSA member noted, . . . you feel
you belong because there are people that you know and that even speak
the same language you do. The ability to express themselves in the full
range of their languages, in a safe space made just for them, encourages
students to voice their opinions and to participate in ways that are denied
them in other HHS settings among their white peers and teachers. Within
MSA, these students are engaged in the serious game of being a high
school student, rather than peripheral players.
More than individual players, the migrant students and other MSA
members, together with the MSA advisers, become a team of sorts.
MSA is a club that unites all of the migrant students of HHS, stated
one member. Another added that the club unites all Mexicans in order
to make a difference in this school. Together, the migrant students and
the advisers bond to create what various members describe as family
and close friendships.
The club advisers acknowledge their conscious efforts to create a
close-knit, caring atmosphere. One explained: I think just the fact that
making students feel that theyre part of something and sharing personal
things with them and for them to see you as, This is my friend, this is
somebody that really cares for me and I mean, just respecting the stu-
dents and demanding the same from them, I think that it is something
that I bring with me. . . . [O]nce they see that we really care and we want
to help, I think they feel part of it, and it just becomes like a family.
Members recognized the advisers efforts and many said that they
participate in MSA because they know the advisers genuinely care for
them as students, as youths of Mexican-descent, as community mem-
bersand as people.
Students also emphasize the importance of being able to identify with
the advisers, who they trust with personal as well as with academic con-
cerns. MEP teachers, who also serve as the clubs advisers, are trusted
mentors and role models for the migrant youths (Gibson and Bejnez,
2002). Both advisers attended local public schools, are themselves the
children of migrant farmworkers, live in the same neighborhoods as
many of the students, and are active participants in the Mexican commu-
nity in Appleton. They point to the importance of creating strong rela-
tionships with students that extend beyond HHS and often associate with
the MSA members and their families outside of the school setting. One
adviser plays soccer and basketball with his students on the weekends
and attends the same Catholic Church that many of the students attend.
At school, MSA members go to the MEP office for academic support
as well as for personal guidance. The two advisers assist the migrant stu-
dents with school assignments and preparations for college, but more no-
tably, students assist one another, sharing academic resources and
knowledge. Seniors often work together on college, scholarship, and fi-
nancial aid applications. Numerous members credit their participation in
MSA and the support they received there as their main motivation to at-
tend college. More broadly, MSA members express the value of studying
and interacting with other students. One nonmigrant MSA member com-
mented, I participate [in MSA] because it gets me to work with people

and it doesnt matter if its with friends or not. Many friendship and
peer networks are formed in MSA that act as resources, or as peer social
capital (for more on peer capital among working-class students of Mexi-
can descent see Stanton-Salazar, 2004).
Students connections with one another are also reinforced through
their participation in MSA weekly meetings and committees, and spon-
sored events. Some students attend nearly every meeting and hold offices
in the club, while others attend meetings and join in MSA-sponsored ac-
tivities less frequently. Yet, these migrant students, who are nearly absent
in larger HHS activities and ceremonies, are welcomed, even encouraged,
to participate in MSA meetings and events. Some organize and facilitate
an end of the year MSA ceremony and graduation banquet, held in con-
junction with Appleton Highs migrant students. The ceremony includes
an optional religious ceremony, a dinner accompanied with mariachis,
speeches delivered by the students, and a dance. This resembles the grad-
uation ceremonies from Mexico and is one of the many ways in which
MSA creates close ties between home, school, and community. The cere-
mony celebrates not only the students academic achievements but also
honors their Mexican heritage. Students who have been nominated by
their peers, give speeches where they formally thank their families and
MEP for their support.
Conclusion
In this chapter we have looked at the school experiences of migrant stu-
dents of Mexican descent in a California high school by focusing on the
interactions and encounters between the migrant students, their peers,
both white and of Mexican descent, and their teachers. It is clear to us that
in certain situations, like the encounters in the Quad, the white students
and teachers representations of Mexican-descent students, migrant stu-
dents in particular, construct the migrants as marginalized others. It is
also true that the migrant students have struggled against and resisted
such constructions while simultaneously making their own identifications.
In spite of the many obstacles in their path, the large majority of Hill-
side Highs migrant students graduate from high school. With the support
and guidance of MEP and MSA, these students construct a successful pro-
academic Mexican student identity (Gibson, 2005), in essence by creating
a new set of game rules. In MSA, unlike other settings across Hillside High,
they are encouraged to participate fully; they are legitimate players. It is
there, with their migrant peers and advisers that they escape, if only tem-
porarily, from the institutionalized daily rituals of the school that construct
them as not belonging. Against all of the constraints of HHSincluding
the inequitable practices of tracking and isolation, the racist discourses pro-
moting English monolingualism, and the class stratificationthe migrant
students, with their MEP teachers, create and maintain a space of belong-
ing in an otherwise isolating campus. There, interacting with each other,
the migrant students transcend the dominant representation, in which they
are seen as academic and social outsidersas ethnic, social class, and lin-
guistic others. Situated within the highly patterned and structured prac-
tices of the school, which serve to conserve the academic success of the
white students, the migrant students construct themselves as engaged and
achieving high school students.
And perhaps these migrant students experiences have a great deal to
do with class and less with ethnicity. However, in the United States, to
speak of ethnicity, is often in many ways to speak of class. Ortner (2003)
suggests that to consider the class/race/ethnicity linkage one consider the
ways in which racial and ethnic groups represent to one another their
own class desires and fears (p. 52). For most of the working-class, mi-
grant, and Mexican-descent students in our study, who inhabit marginal-
ized positions in the larger Hillside campus, the predominantly
middle-class white students, with their cultural capital, represent the ref-
erent by which they gauge their own academic success, their own abil-
ity to play the game of being a successful high school student. Most of
the white students know exactly how to get decent, if not good grades,
and know how to make out college applications, which is more an un-
spoken expectation than a distant goal. Most of the migrant students do
not inherently know these things and must struggle to construct them-
selves as academically successful. Through their participation in MSA,
the students create alternative pathways by playing with, and by ap-
propriating the rules of, the success game. They struggle against the
constructions of their white and Mexican middle-class peersand in
essence reconstruct themselves.
Finally, returning to the metaphor of serious games, we conclude that
the migrant students of Mexican descent play multiple games simultane-
ouslybroadly belonging and participating in high school, learning En-
glish, constructing alternative paths of possible social mobility, and
developing pro-academic and ethnic identities in MSA. They are indeed
made, through their encounters with their teachers, and with their
white and nonmigrant Mexican peers as the linguistic, cultural, and so-
cioeconomic others. Yet, they also construct themselves as belong-
ing, engaged, and achieving students. Through their participation in
MSA, they (re)define their positions within HHS in ways that challenge
their configurations as foreign others and provide for the possibilities
of participating in the larger game of schooling at HHS. At this point,
there is an ongoing working out of things socialthe identities con-

structed for and by the migrant students, the boundaries of contexts or
playing fields in which the migrant students participate, and the deter-
minants and values of rules and goals in the serious game of being a
migrant student of Mexican-descent in an American high school.
Notes
1. Power does not directly make or determine others, but it does structure
the fields of action, guiding the course of conduct and ordering the possible out-
comes. Power is central to the totality of ongoing social processes, which are char-
acterized by positioned interpretations, values, and ideas (Williams, 1977, pp.
1089). It is ever present in interactions by which we force others into compre-
hensible (and usually ordered) categories. Power, then, is not a static system of dom-
ination, but rather processes that define the norm while constantly being resisted
and challenged.
2. All names are pseudonyms.
3. Due to the history of tensions, the school administration no longer cele-
brates these days at HHS. Rather than making a concerted effort to plan activities
more carefully and to embed them in the educational curriculum, the school has
decided instead to replace them with a more politically neutral World Week.
This lack of recognition of Mexican holidays is a major disappointment to the
Mexican-descent students, three-quarters of whom stated on the eleventh-grade
survey that these days should definitely be celebrated at school.
Acknowledgments
The research discussed in this chapter was made possible in part through generous
grants from the Spencer Foundation (199900129) and from the U.S. Department of
Education/OERI (r305t990174), Margaret A. Gibson, Principal Investigator. We
also wish to acknowledge our gratitude to all of the students and staff from Hillside
High School who have contributed to this work.
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U.S. Census Bureau 2002. Demographic profile (Table DP-3). Profile of Selected
Economic Characteristics, Aptos CDP, California: 2000, published May, 14
2002. Retrieved May 17, 2002 from http://censtats.census.gove/cgi~bin/pct/
pctProfile.pl.
Valdes, G. 2001. Learning and not learning: Latino students in American schools.
New York: Teachers College Press.
Williams, R. (1977). Marxism and literature. New York: Oxford University
Press.
5
ORCHESTRATING HABITUS
AND FIGURED WORLDS
CHICANA/O EDUCATIONAL
MOBILITY AND SOCIAL CLASS
Luis Urrieta Jr.
For the curios, yes, I have traveled a long way from the cotton fields
and my origins as a Chicano migrant farmworker. The journey so far
has been an exceptional one. Not because I have traveled it, but be-
cause I am still surviving. The costs of the journey have been im-
mense. I have lost some of myself in the journey. The journey has
transformed me into a curiosity for my students and colleagues
He has a Stanford Ph.D. However, not even Stanford, with its aca-
demic splendor, was enough to transform me in the eyes of students
and colleagues. To them I am a stranger. I am a Chicano farmworker
in academe. The field is still a field.
Adalberto Aguirre Jr. (1995, p. 26)
I use the term Chicana/o in this chapter because the data used comes from a study that re-
quired that consultants self-identify as Chicana/o; however, the term Chicana/o is not a neu-
tral term. It is often a highly politicized term in the struggle against U.S. neocolonialism,
racism, and other multiple forms of oppression. I am using the term consciously in that tra-
dition and for that reason there is variation in the use of terms. Sometimes I will use the
terms Latina/o or Mexican-American that do not have that political and activist implication
and tradition; that is deliberate and for that reason the reader should pay close attention to
this variation in use.
113
114 Luis Urrieta Jr.
Introduction
Adalberto Aguirre Jr. aptly expresses some of the frustration facing
Latina/o faculty members encountering stereotypes in their careers in
academia. His expression, the field is still a field is appropriate, but
should be contextualized, for as the Native American educational an-
thropologist Bryan M. J. Brayboy (2003) correctly points out, doing
fieldwork in the academy is not the same as doing fieldwork out in the
fields. Despite the clarification, this citation reflects a complex set of is-
sues involving racial, meritocratic, and consumerist implications when
analyzing social class. In general, the stereotype is that most educationally
mobile Latinas/os, especially those of Mexican heritage, are of farm-
working or poor working-class origins. The truth is that many of us are
and many of us are not. Even within the income brackets known as
working class, there is considerable variation and intergroup oppres-
sion, for now we know that modernist interpretations of labeled groups
such as working class are not coherent, collective, essentialized, homo-
geneous wholes (Morrow and Torres, 1995).
Scholarship on class analyses have not been as prolific as studies of race,
while educational mobility studies for minority students have received some
attention (Gndara, 1995). Academic research tends to be compartmental-
ized into variables, when in reality race, gender, class, and other variables
are so interwoven that they are not exclusive, but mutually dependent and
informing (Hatt-Echeverra and Urrieta, 2003). Scholars of color in partic-
ular, in an effort to combat the pathological images of minorities as de-
viants, disadvantaged, or as the products of cultures of poverty (Galdwin,
1990) produced by whitestream scholarship, have focused on race without
clearly associating race to class and to other related variables. Sandy Marie
A. Grande (2000) refers to whitestream as the cultural capital of whites
in almost every facet of U.S. society. Whitestream scholarship would thus
be academic scholarship, not necessarily produced by whites, but that pro-
duced by any scholar to support white cultural capital (perspective and val-
ues). The term whitestream is used as opposed to mainstream in an effort
to decenter whiteness as dominant.
This chapter explores the intricacy of how social class is attributed
with explicit and implicit racial, meritocratic, and consumerist character-
istics in Chicana/o educational experiences. The data presented in this
chapter is from a larger qualitative study of twenty-four educationally
successful Chicanas/os. The bulk of the data is drawn from the retro-
spective interview (Gndara, 1995) method employed. Theoretically,
using the concepts of the habitus and of figured worlds in practice and so-
cial practice theory, this chapter explores how educational mobility is tied
to class in the history-in-person (Holland and Lave, 2001) of Chicanas/os
Orchestrating Habitus 115
in a complex array of experience. While some Latina/o students from

working-class backgrounds learn to play the game (Urrieta, 2004) of
education, many do not. The complexity lies in the social, cultural, and
economic landscape of the Latina/o contextual geography of the
United States. This contextual geography will be further discussed, as will
the practices that allow some working-class students to enter and play the
educational mobility game, and others not.
Background
The data in this study builds on the Chicana/o scholarship focusing on at-
tainment in higher education and on the survival practices of Chi-
canas/os as resiliency and more recently as persistence (Gndara, 1995;
Gonzlez, 2001; Gonzlez et al., 2001; Hurtado, 1994; Padilla, 1999;
Stanton-Salazar, 2001). Agency in this literature is seen as the will and the
drive to achieve academic success, especially through social networks
and strong familial ties, despite the barriers that the system might produce.
The most influential work as a foundation to this chapter is Patricia Gn-
daras (1995) seminal work on low-income Chicana/o educational success.
Gndaras study (1995) is fundamentally important because it is a
study of the first documented cohort of low-income Mexican-Americans
with low family educational backgrounds to complete doctoral level ed-
ucation. Gndara (1995, pp. 11415) highlights the importance of the
active implementation of affirmative action programs, financial assis-
tance, and active college recruitment during the 1960s. These subjects
attended college during a period when opportunities were opening up
for minorities. Major civil rights legislation had recently passed and col-
leges and universities were recruiting minority applicants and, in many
cases, funding their educations. . . . The importance of the time cannot
be overstated.
Gndaras subjects attended college during the 1960s and 1970s and
completed Ph.D.s, M.D.s, or J.D.s. Her study includes a second cohort
of Chicanas/os to compare to the first in fundamental characteristics and
experiences. The second cohort completed advanced degrees between the
late 1980s and mid-1990s.
Gndara found that the subjects in her study shared some common
characteristics in their educational development. These characteristics are
highly important when analyzing consultant1 heuristic identity develop-
ment K12 in the life histories documented in this chapter. These charac-
teristics were as relevant during the time when Gndara conducted her
fieldwork as they are now. In effect, what I found are the ripple effects,
as one consultant in this study put it, of these first cohorts of Chicana/o
scholars referred by Gndara (1995, p. 11) as . . . the advance team for

a new generation of Chicano scholars, born in the fields and the barrios,
but educated in the nations elite universities.
The characteristics identified by Gndara were parenting styles with
an authoritarian figure, most often with the mother playing an active role
in education, and families sharing values believed to be attributed to the
middle class. This includes a hard work ethic where children are well
aware of their parents work and oftentimes work with them. Family
folklore included a culture of possibility and sustained the view that
education is a strategy for mobility.
Gndara attributed educational attainment to intense personal drives
for achievement where her subjects often made vows to not live in the
kind of poverty they were born into, thus depending on persistence, hard
work, and to a lesser degree on ability for educational mobility. Oppor-
tunity played a key role in gaining access to college preparatory curricu-
lum and to the information and resources that made attending college a
reliable goal. Contact with white peer groups was important and often Chi-
cana/o students attending schools in racially mixed schools had greater ac-
cess to resources (in economic and whitestream cultural and social capital).
Gndara highlights the fact that low-income students possessed some
of the characteristics attributed to the middle class (i.e., a hard work
ethic, persistence, and cultures of possibility). This variation in character-
istics and practices illustrates that the working class is not a homogenous
collective, as often outdated modernist and generalized quantitative va-
lidity claims would have us believe. The contextual geography (and I
use this term in quotes because I am referring to the social-historical land-
scape of the Latina/o community) is thus multiple, intricate, and varied in
terms of identity (including race, gender, class, sexual preferences, reli-
gion, and generational and linguistic differences). The following section
will attempt to explore a brief and general explanation of what that land-
scape might look like in terms of the Latina/o working class.
Contextual Geography of the Latina/o Class

Systems in the United States
There is an infinite possibility of interpretations of what the social-his-
torical class landscape might look like for the Latina/o community in the
United States. In order to begin to explore that landscape, however, keep
in mind that even though the Latina/o community has recently been given
media attention due to the 2000 U.S. Census reports, this community is
not new to the United States. In fact, what we now call Latinas/os or
Hispanics were living in what is now the United States long before
1776. The continuous flow of Latin American migrants over the cen-
turies, but especially after 1910, has consistently strengthened and diver-
sified the characteristics of this community.
Although the possibilities are multiple, I will argue for three major
systems in practice in this Latina/o class landscape. The first is the Latin
American class system, keeping in mind that social class is not indepen-
dent of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual preferences, religion, educational
levels, and so forth. The second system is the U.S. whitestream system,
and the third is a hybrid system, a local system that fuses and orchestrates
aspects of both. Latinas/os in the United States orchestrate aspects of all
three in different degrees, especially those living in communities with a
high Latina/o presence.
The Latin American class system tends to be well-defined and rigid. I
will use the example of Mexico for context specificity and also because
the focus of this work is on Chicanas/os, but I also wish to clarify that
this system is also multiple and complex. My interpretation of this system
is but a glimpse of what could be written about it. In Mexico there is, and
has been, a visible economically wealthy elite group that is small and
highly exclusive, an almost nonexistent middle class, and a rather large
number of poor, working-class people. Keep in mind that poverty in
Mexico is very different than in the United States. Historically, race has,
and continues to play, a strong role. The active rejection of indigenous
people has often equated being uneducated, lacking reason, and being
marginal and poor to being indio (Indian) (for further discussion see Ur-
rieta, 2003b). Mobility in this system is difficult and resources are scarce,
since the national elite and foreign investors have an almost complete mo-
nopoly over production. This is especially true after the implementation
of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994 that
caused the large waves of undocumented immigration to the United
States. Class is especially important in defining peoples place in this sys-
tem, often more so than other variables such as race, although race is al-
ways associated with class, but you can escape your race, if you can
move up in class. An abundance of terms to clearly demarcate class exist
such as chusma, Naco, chntaros, indios, and mal educados (unedu-
cated). Keep in mind, as Sophia Villenas (1996) and Guadalupe Valdes
(1996) have pointed out, that the concept of educacin (education) in
Latin America means something very different than education in the
United States. Educacin is a system of manners, like habitus disposi-
tions, which also indicate class status.
The second system is the U.S. class system. This system is too, rigid,
and well-defined, but the differences are not as obvious because of the
consumerist, meritocratic illusion of being middle class. In Latin America
the poor know they are poor; in the United States many poor think they
are middle class. People in the United States are often blind to the reality
of their socioeconomic conditions. In the U.S. system, race and class are
also interdependent historically, but race takes a much more prominent
role that diverts attention from class. The opposite is true in Mexico,
where until recently there was no acknowledgment of racial problems
until the Zapatista rebellions in 1994 (Holloway and Pelez, 1998). The
U.S. system actively promotes itself as a meritocratic, democratic, and
just system where hard work and personal drive are rewarded with the
American Dream, regardless of race, gender, disability, or religion. This
is a system where successful minority people are showcased as the proof
that racism does not exist and yet there has not been a single nonwhite
president, a women president, and much less an openly gay president, or
Muslim president to show for it. This myth of meritocracy equates peo-
ple living in deplorable conditions of rampant crime, drug use, run-down
schools, and so forth, as the working class, of any race, not as the result
of societal inequalities and racist structural outcomes but actively places
the blame on individuals and communities as failures.
The third system is a hybrid Latina/o system that is constantly being
remade. In this system, some elements of the Latin American class system
reform in the U.S. context, complimenting the U.S. class system in some
ways, and clashing in others. This hybrid system varies according to lo-
cality and can be as particular as to a family unit and as broad as the
Latina/o U.S. imagined community (Oboler, 1995). In this system la
chusma and los Nacos still exist, but so do, welferas (women on welfare),
narcotraficantes (Drug Lords), cholos/as (gang members), white trash,
hood rats, lowlifes, bumbs, wetbacks, mojados, sellouts,
High-spanics, and so forth. In this system there is a great division. Dif-
ferences exist according to who is U.S. born and who is an immigrant,
who is legal or undocumented, who speaks English, who is bilingual, and
who is a monolingual Spanish speaker. There is a difference in who calls
herself Hispanic, Mexican-American, Latina/o, Chicana/o, Salvador-
ea/o, Boricua, and so forth. There is also a difference in who is of Euro-
pean, mestizo (of mixed racial heritage), Indian (Native), or black
heritage, and the sociohistoric pigmentocratic hierarchy of skin color in
Latin America (with white having the highest privileges and prestige)
helps to sustain white supremacy in the United States. For example, stud-
ies have shown that Latinas/os of a more white-looking phenotype tend
to be more successful in U.S. society. As an example, take the personal
histories of the mostly white-looking Cuban refugees given asylum and
economic assistance in the 1960s. Generation differences, educational at-
tainment levels, religion, and age are all also important distinctions in this
hybrid system as well.
The orchestration of the three systems explored here is constant for
people who maneuver themselves in all three systems, and in many more.
As an example, this might include an individual spending time in Latin

America with her grandparents in a rural indigenous village, living in a
predominantly working-class urban U.S. Latina/o neighborhood, and
working in an all-white business environment. The constant improvisa-
tion and orchestration is crucial to be able to function in such different
environments. The focus here is on three very general and broad exam-
ples, yet the possibilities for many more macro- and micro-examples of
class systems exist. In any case, people learn to perform within the dispo-
sitions of their environments (habitus) at an almost unconscious level due
to how society has socially and historically positioned groups of people.
In order to participate in another environment, people need to relearn
those dispositions so that they are able to perform in those secondary en-
vironments. Such is the orchestration that I will explore in this chapter
as it relates to Chicana/o educational success, but in order to proceed, I
wish to revisit the concepts of the habitus and of figured worlds.
Theoretical Frameworks
Habitus and Figured Worlds

Pierre Bourdieu (1977) defines the habitus as a way of being, a set of
dispositions, a tendency, and inclination toward certain practices
learned at an unaware level due to the social positioning of groups of peo-
ple produced historically. For example, when Adalberto Aguirre (1995)
refers to himself as a curiosity for his white students and colleagues that
he is therefore a stranger to Stanford, he is conveying the dispositions of
his working-class, farm-working origins. According to the material and
symbolic experiences of his history-in-person as a working-class Chi-
cana/o, he expresses his subjective and internalized system of structures,
schemes of perception, conception, and action of his upbringing (p. 86).
Regardless of how much success he enjoys, he always will have those
humble origins as his primary habitus that will forever keep him estranged
from full participation (both in reality and in his own perception).
Habitus is thus a matrix of perceptions, appreciations, and ac-
tions (Bourdieu, 1977, p. 83), produced historically and reproduced in-
dividually and naturalized and experienced as a taken-for-granted.
Jon Webb, Tony Schirato, and Geoff Danaher (2002, p. 15) provide a
useful definition of habitus: Habitus can be understood as, on the one
hand, the historical and cultural production of individual practices
since contexts, laws, rules, and ideologies all speak through individuals,
who are never entirely aware that this is happeningand, on the other
hand, the individual production of practicessince the individual
always acts from self-interest.
Habitus is thus more of a macro-defintion of the cultural practices

that inform the dispositions of the working class. I wish to use this con-
cept cautiously, however, because I refrain from generalizing in the mod-
ernist tradition and thus to essentialize groups of people as collective
wholes. In whitestream U.S. society however, it is safe to say that those
groups that have alternate systems of habitus may have little opportunity
for public participation (Blackledge, 2002, p. 70), unless they learn to
practice the practices of the secondary whitestream habitus.
Identity is key in understanding how habitus and figured worlds
function in relation to class and other interrelated variables. Dorothy
Holland, William Lachicotte, Debra Skinner, and Carole Cain (1998)
current understanding of identity is one of becoming, not of being. Iden-
tity is thus a site for the social authoring of the Self, or auto-naming,
embedded in a collective past and created in practice through life experi-
ences, or through history-in-person (Holland and Lave, 2001). Therefore,
identities are always in process, mediated by cultural artifacts and dis-
courses, but are also capable of improvisation. Improvisation at particu-
lar moments or in specific situations and contexts is a key factor because
it can lead to the creation of an altered identity. Thus, a person from a
primary working-class habitus, can enter a middle-class habitus with the
intent of changing some of the alienating practices of the secondary
habitus through improvisations. Holland and her colleagues (1998,
pp. 1718) elaborate, Improvisations are the sort of impromptu actions
that occur when our past, brought to the present as habitus, meets with
a particular combination of circumstances and contradictions for which
we have no set response. . . . In our view, improvisations, from a cultural
base and in response to the subject positions offered in situ, are, when
taken up as a symbol, potential beginnings of an altered subjectivity, an
altered identity.
Holland and her colleagues (1998) social practice theory also incor-
porates the Bhaktinian concept of dialogism, which implies that humans
can entertain different internal dialogues simultaneously, and can thus or-
chestrate participating in multiple habitus and figured worlds at the same
time. This enables people, in practice, to embody internal tensions and
contradictions. For example, Chicana writer Gloria Anzalda (1987,
p. 85) writes, A veces no soy nada ni nadie. Pero hasta cuando no lo
soy, lo soy. (Sometimes I am nothing and no one. But, even when I am
not, I am.) Thus Anzalda expresses the ability to exist in the contradic-
tion of being everything and nothing simultaneously.
In the same vein, Chicana scholar Dolores Delgado Bernal (2001,
p. 626) states that a mestiza consciousness is both born out of oppres-
sion and is a conscious struggle against it. These seemingly contradic-
tory stances are in line with the notion of dialogism and hybridity that
imply that Chicanas/os have multiple essences, ni de aqu ni de all, not

from here nor from there (Mexico or the U.S.). Implied is also in-be-
tweeness, not really Indian or Spanish, not Mexican nor American, not
really English or Spanish but Spanglish, not really the United States nor
Mexico, but Aztln. And thus emerges the hybrid third-class system of
Latinas/os in the United States, incorporating Latin American elements
with U.S. whitestream class system structures.
The following excerpt from a poem, submitted as a personal document
by a Chicana in this study, helps illustrate a few of the contradictions:
I am a mixture
Mestiza, indigenous, African, and gachupina
All bloods run through my veins
And pump the blood in my heart
Chicana, Mejicana, Americana
Mexican in America
American in Mexico
A mixture of three
That combine into one
It is precisely these historical contexts, as described in the poem,

often linked to place (the U.S. and Mexico) that help inform the collec-
tive/group memory in struggles against structural oppression (i.e., the cul-
tural politics of Chicana/o identity).
Drawing from Aleksei N. Leontiev (1978) on activity theory, Hol-
land and her colleagues theory (1998) conceptualizes figured worlds as
socially produced, culturally constructed activities to which we are re-
cruited, drawn into, or enter and develop at different degrees and that we
are dependent on ones position through interactions and participation.
Figured worlds become more like processes or traditions as well as his-
torical phenomenon to be apprehended as we are gathered up and given
form as our lives intersect with them. Figured world then provides a
means to conceptualize historical subjectivities, consciousness and
agency, persons (and collective agents) forming in practice (pp. 4041).
Thus, it is through participation (practice) in figured worlds that peo-
ple reconceptualize historically who they are as individuals or collectives
and through this consciousness come to understand their agency.
Holland and her colleagues (1998) state that figured worlds are so-
cial encounters, organized and reproduced by dividing and relating par-
ticipants to each other while depending on these interactions and
intersubjectivities for perpetuation. The significance of figured worlds is
held by re-creating them by working with others in localized and tempo-
ral spaces that give voice to particular landscapes and experiences. Un-
derstanding figured worlds is useful to help us heuristically develop an
awareness of how access to higher education and educational mobility is

currently being acquired by working-class Latinas/os. In a sense the mer-
itocratic and competitive model of educational spaces, enables only a
very select few students of color real access to the aspirations of the
American Dream and to others of the same group a deceptive lie that
places blame on individuals for lack of success. For some students, edu-
cational success at an early age is already an unthinkable reality.2
Figured worlds compliment habitus in this chapter because figured
worlds function from micro-locality to an infinite possibility of larger
meaning; habitus is more rigid and defined, like the structures of society
while figured worlds allow for more individual agency. Applying an un-
derstanding that there is a class habitus is thus appropriate in a broad sense
due to the material and symbolic conditions experienced by groups of peo-
ple historically. But access to micro-, local figured worlds allows for entry
into a secondary class habitusthe middle classthrough educational
mobility. Such figured worlds are, for example, ability groups that lead
a working-class student to be recruited to a magnet school, which may
eventually lead her to a college education, as was the case with Isadora,
who is discussed later in this chapter. The following section uses data from
an ongoing two-year study of educationally mobile Chicanas/os in Califor-
nia to explore how Mexican-American students of working-class and
upper working-class backgrounds (K12) were allowed access to higher ed-
ucation and to social class mobility. This access was through recruitment
into the figured worlds of ability grouping and tracking in schools.
Methodology
The Study
The anthropological methods used in this study fall within the general
premise of participant observation (Davies, 2001). The general meth-
ods included (1) fieldnotes; (2) interviews; (3) observations of consultants
in practice; (4) participant observations; (5) document and artifact analy-
ses, including electronic mail; and (6) ethnography. Four groups of self-
identified Chicana/o activists participated in this study according to the
following group criteria: (1) undergraduates in the social sciences plan-
ning to enter the field of education at any level; (2) professional educators
currently working in the field of education (K12) either as teachers,
counselors, administrators, and so forth; (3) graduate students in educa-
tion programs; and (4) Chicana/o professors in the field of education.
Each group consisted of 6 people, 3 men and 3 women. Twenty-four
interviews were used for the general analysis of the larger study (for fur-
ther details on the study see Urrieta, 2003a). Consultant ages ranged
from 19 to 57. To participate, consultants had to self-identify as Chi-
cana/o, fit one of these four groups, and have a strong activist ideolog-
ical orientation. Pseudonyms are used for all of the people in this study.
Interviews
Interview narratives were carefully analyzed before, during, and after
transcription since this is the primary source of data. Although the inter-
view protocol was semi-structured, most of the interviews were more like
conversations rather than question and answer sessions. Interviews
ranged between a forty-minute session and up to two, three-hour ses-
sions, or six hours of recorded interviews.
Interviews were, for the most part, conducted in English. Some con-
sultants used Spanish and others did not, or could not because they were
monolingual English speakers or did not feel comfortable talking about
academic matters in Spanish. All of the interviews were conducted exclu-
sively through dyadic interaction except for one in which a consultants
significant other was present.
Retrospective Interview
Each consultant was asked to remember her or his development of their
academic and social/cultural identities. Questions such as the following
were asked:
Tell me about your educational experiences.
Elementary, Middle School, High School.

Was language ever an issue?
What did you learn about being Chicano/Latino in school
(K12)?
Undergraduate, Graduate School.
Who have been your educational mentors? (Describe them.) How
were they your mentors?
What were you taught about how to be successful in school?
Was that different from being successful at home?
How would you say your culture defines success?
How was what you learned in school different from what you
learned culturally?
As already mentioned, the interviews were semi-structured so often

the protocol questions were used to initiate the conversation only. Con-
sultants were freely encouraged to recall events in detail. One consultant
recalls that My kindergarten teacher said I was smart and that I would
do great things. Shed always tell my mom that.
In this study, similarities in K12 experiences corroborate with Gn-
daras (1995) findings on the educational mobility of low-income Chi-
canas/os; income was not a criteria used in this study; each consultant
self-identified as being of working-class (including upper working-class)
origins. As opposed to most of their peers, almost all of the consultants
developed a positive academic identity early on. This identification and
invitation into the figured world of smartness (for a full discussion on
smartness see Hatt-Echeverra, 2003) was created and nurtured mostly by
teachers in the educational institutions that these students attended,
whether these were public, private, or alternative schools. Once con-
structed as smart, most consultants were placed in honors or gifted
tracks that made them aware of being considered smart, even if this
changed for some in later grades. In private or rural school settings where
student populations are not large enough to officially track, students
were segregated into high or low ability groups. In all cases, students
became aware early in their academic trajectory, with a few exceptions,
that they were different from the other kids, even if the other kids
were of the same racial/ethnic background, and were expected to perform
well academically.
The main case where this was not found was with Julin and with
those who entered the educational system as monolingual Spanish speak-
ers. These students suffered under the stereotype of low teacher expecta-
tions of Spanish-speaking students, especially those enrolled in bilingual
education programs. Another exception of this early smart identifica-
tion is the case of a much older consultant in his midfifties. This was due
primarily to highly racialized expectations of Mexican-American students
in the time and context of his youth. However, being an athlete and at-
tending an integrated, primarily white middle-class school was the impe-
tus for his recognition as smart and for his subsequent placement into
a college track.
In such cases, students had to fight, literally and/or figuratively,
against the perception of not being expected to be smart. Julin, for ex-
ample, recalls teachers being frustrated with him for not knowing what
a bonnet was. Such items of whitestream culture, although they seemed
like little things to his teacher, were completely foreign in Julins cul-
tural world where bonnets did not exist, but rebozos did. Despite
Julins demoralizing experiences in low-quality English as a Second
Language (ESL) programs, he became an avid reader. He was identified
as college material by the time he was in high school, even though he
refused to change his academic track, which was not considered to be
college bound.
Another example is Jaime, an undergraduate and second-generation

immigrant.3 Growing up in southern California in the late 1980s, he en-
tered the public schools as a monolingual Spanish speaker. He enrolled in
bilingual education programs in primarily Latino and African-American
elementary schools. Although several teachers tried to test him out and
officially track him as gifted, his official redesignation was delayed
until the fifth grade.
Starting with kindergarten, my teacher said I was very smart and

would do great things . . . I was in bilingual education until . . . the fifth
grade because every time a teacher wanted to test me into the gifted pro-
gram, we would end up moving. So in third grade a white teacher again
said I was smart and would do great things and he took . . . four of us
out and gave us separate work to prepare us for this test. So I took the
test and got labeled as gifted and talented, but then we moved again and
I was again placed into a bilingual classroom. And it wasnt till . . . fifth
grade that I won a Math competition that they [teachers] finally checked
my record and saw that I had been labeled GT two years before. Then I
was moved to the GATE classes.
Despite teachers efforts, every time Jaime had to change schools, his
label as bilingual automatically placed him back into a bilingual track
that is often disassociated with being gifted. The reality is that there are
probably thousands more like Jaime who are bilingual and gifted and
never identified or even sought out because of mainstream educators per-
ceptions of children in bilingual classes (Gonzlez Baker, 1996).
Another exception to the early identification as smart is Juan, a
second-generation Chicano who entered an almost entirely Latino
Catholic school in greater Los Angeles as a monolingual Spanish speaker
in the late 1970s. His case is atypical of being identified as smart at a
young age, but is quite typical of not having a memory of early educa-
tional experiences, probably attributed to the sink or swim English lan-
guage learning approach and to the language learning process. I really
dont remember those days [in Catholic school]. I remember playing
in the playground, talking to my friends . . . messing around in class,
but in terms of education, I dont remember anything. I believe its be-
cause it was English only and my language being Spanish, I probably
dont remember what the teachers were teaching me.
Johnny remembers being pulled out of class to attend special
classes in reading and he was fully aware of the fact that special did not
mean it was good. I remember them sending me to these special reading
classes, but they were all in English with no Spanish support, so I learned
how to read, but I didnt really understand what I was saying. I guess I
knew I was slower and that made me feel bad.
In middle school, when he moved to another part of the city and

transferred to public schools, he was automatically placed in bilingual
and remedial classes based on his grades and standardized test scores.
Johnny admits that he felt more comfortable because other kids
would speak Spanish, but did not feel that his classes were challeng-
ing. It was not until high school that he insisted that his academic coun-
selor transfer him to honors classes because his older brother was in this
track and he wanted to do the same. Finally, after several times, I would
say after the seventh time, he [counselor] got mad at me and told me if
you dont make it dont say I didnt warn you and come back crying to
me! And he finally authorized the permission for me to transfer to the
honors classes.
Johnny got As, did exceptionally well in his honors courses, and
later attended a major public university and is now a bilingual public
elementary schoolteacher in his home community.
Other than these three cases, all of the twenty-four consultants devel-
oped a positive academic identity early on. Most were tracked in the early
elementary school years either in separate high groups, gifted and
talented classes, or schools, such as magnet schools. In cases where con-
sultants later deviated from this positive academic identity, this early iden-
tification served as a motivation for them to be able to again be perceived
as academically oriented. In the cases where this early identification did
not occur, as in those just mentioned, a later recognition of academic
promise, even if with reluctance, was recognized. These students were
eventually tracked into programs and classes that enabled them to have
access to the officially labeled college-bound curriculum and later to col-
leges and universities. Of all the consultants, Julin and Johnny were iden-
tified the latest as college material by the tenth grade in high school, and
in Johnnys case, this was mainly after several attempts and with great
reluctance and communicated predictions of failure.
Alicia, now a continuation high school teacher, was the only female
exception to continuous tracking, although she was identified as smart
early on. Because of barrio social and economic conditions, Alicia devi-
ated from her designation as smart, and became involved in high-risk ac-
tivities that eventually led to her multiple pregnancies, and attending
continuation school. It was not until much later that she met a Chicano
teacher, and was able to regain her academic identity. She subsequently
completed her Associate of Arts degree at a local community college, and
later her bachelors degree and teaching credentials from a prominent
public university.
The sorting practices and subsequent labeling of the students in this
study as smart created physical and social distancing between them and
other Chicana/o, Latina/o students. Isadora, for example, thought of the
regular students as dumb. Through her new consciousness as a Chi-

cana, she recognizes them as being in her own ethnic/cultural group by
using the term Raza. . . . like there were Raza at my school, but they
were in regular . . . everyone always talked bad about like the regular kids
and stuff . . . its kind of bad, but I did feel like oh Im not a regular kid.
I felt kind of extra special or something. . . . I dont think I ever outwardly
made fun of them, but I know that I would look at them and think,
youre dumb!
Eva, a second-generation Chicana now completing undergraduate
studies at a state university also recalls, Like B track was all the ESL
people and wed say, oh you know all the wetters [version of wetback]
are all on B track, and things like that.
In Juanitas case, the distinction between herself as a Catholic school
student and those in public schools, even though she grew up in a pre-
dominantly Latino/a neighborhood, has a clear class connotation when
she referred to them as chusma (low class) because they did not attend
Catholic schools.
Even in cases where the distinctions made were not in such antago-
nistic terms, the identification as smart and subsequent tracking created
distancing, especially for students like Phillip who attended schools that
were physically, socially, and economically removed from the physical
boundaries of the barrio. Because of his upper working-class status, Phillip
had access to wealthier, more diverse, schools and access to whitestream
society through his student peers. His mothers employment as a parapro-
fessional at a less wealthy school made him aware of the distinctions.
. . . she (his mother) was a teachers aid and worked with monolin-
gual Spanish-speaking students. So I was totally exposed to that and ex-
posed to people that just spoke Spanish and didnt speak much English
and also who didnt have a whole lot of money, didnt have [a] whole
lot of resources cause where she was working [it] was a very poor
school. . . . Id always go with her to events and things like that. Shed
put on the assemblies for those schools and Id be there watching those
kids. So I knew at that time that there were kids that were different than
me that were also Mexicano that spoke mostly Spanish and . . . lived in
those kinds of environments.
Even though Phillip remembers having an active identification as

Mexicano, his English language, and economic and upper working-class
status, created distance from those schools and from those kids who
lived in those environments. For other students the separation occurred
within the school. Tracking within schools was also identified by some to
be culturally isolating because of the distancing from members of the same
ethnic group. Therese recalls, . . . it [school] was kind of isolating because
my best friends didnt think they were smart. Like my little Chicanita
friends, one of my friends I remember . . . she was in the slower class and
she was like, You know Im not smart like you. She would always say
things like that . . . but [in] K6 a lot of my friends were white . . . high
school was a little different; all my friends were Asian. It just transformed
because they were in the honors classes. . . .
This isolation occurred in Thereses experience even though her school
community was about 80 percent Mexican. Phillips case illustrates the
physical removal from the community, while for Therese, it was the physi-
cal removal within the community and the schools within schools effect
of tracking, even in schools with high minority populations.
Chicanos in U.S. society are also divided with internal strife that in
many predominantly Chicana/o, Latina/o neighborhoods is manifested
through differences between the generations, language use, and in gangs, as
already mentioned. Henry, for example, described being very critical of
his own people and using derogatory terms like wetbacks toward
members of the immigrant generation. Making distinctions within the
community was also evident in Evas case where she recalls referring to ESL
students as wetters, or in Isadoras case as chntaros, or to certain lower
working-class neighborhoods as chuntyville, or in the case of Santa Ana,
California, as Chuntana. In Thereses experience for example, her father
was adamant about her not comparing herself, even physically, to Mexi-
cans from Mexico. Yet her father was a fighter for rights and proud to
be Chicano, a pride he instilled in his children at a young age.
Alexandra had a similar experience where a mojado (wetback), in
her familys lore, was not a suitable marriage partner. I do remember
family members and people saying mojado all the time and using it in a
negative way. Sometimes it was used just as an identifier to distinguish
between second, third generation, and immigrant, but a lot of times,
especially when it came to marriage, it was seen as a negative thing. Like
if youre a Mexican-American and you marry a Mexican, theyre using
you to get their citizenship. I remember [my] family saying that.
Thus, differences illustrating internal community division and inter-
nalized oppression with implicit class distinctions abound, reflecting the
effects of subordination and if not physical, then psycho-emotional self-
destruction. Divide and conquer is in place.
Most consultants recall these differences becoming more pronounced
during and after middle school, especially with regards to race, class, gen-
der, and sexuality. In primarily Chicano/Latino communities there is a
constant differentiation made between those American born and those
born elsewhere, primarily Mexico. Those distinctions become quite pro-
nounced and even lead to violence and aggression among students and
community members. On the other end pochos, wannabe gringos, or
High-spanics were common retorts by members of the first generation.

The terms norteo (northerner for U.S. born) and sureo (southerner for
Mexico born) also became identifiers for groups and gangs. Alicia, the
continuation high school teacher, recalls such divisions. I didnt see too
many differences between them [gangs]. Besides of course, you know the
Norteos were all Chicanos and the Sureos were all from Mxico ok. By
the way, my kids dad actually was a Sureo; he was a Norteo at first
until he found out he was from Mxico. And when he found out he was
born in Mxico, then he was hanging out with all the Sureos. . . .
This example is not only indicative of distinctions made among
Latino students, but also of the hybrid forms that emerge from a Mexi-
can-origin identity. This example shows the plurality in the hybridity of
the third class system explored earlier, but also in this case illustrates the
permeability and constant improvisation of that hybridity.
For some of the consultants these feelings of difference translated
into feelings of embarrassment or even resentment of the home cul-
ture and language, or dialect (i.e., Spanglish or other hybrid forms of lan-
guage). Some consultants recalled feeling uncomfortable speaking pure
Spanish or being around relatives speaking only Spanish in whitestream
settings. Alexandra, for example, did not like having her third-generation
fully bilingual mother speaking Spanish to her teachers.
I didnt even think about that [the language issue] until maybe junior
high or high school, the fact that my mom spoke Spanish. Like I didnt
even think about that, like the only reason I knew is because when she
would go to school and speak Spanish sometimes I would feel uncom-
fortable because I knew she knew English. . . . I didnt realize it but at
that time I was privileging English because I was thinking well if she
speaks English then theyll [teachers] realize that she can speak English
to them.
Early on Alexandra was made aware of the fact that if her mother
spoke in English she would somehow get better treatment and more
attention from the teachers and administrators at the school.
Class plays an important implicit role as consultants in their K12
experiences often equated lower working class with being more Mexi-
can, or having more Mexican cultural traits, somewhat like the clas-
sical Mexican context in which poverty is associated with being more
Indian (Urrieta, 2003b). In Juanitas case she equated shopping at the
swap meet (flea market), for example, as somehow being more Mexi-
can, TJ (for Tijuana), or chusma as opposed to shopping at name
brand and expensive department stores like Robinsons May. Her fa-
thers old station wagon was also an issue because she was always com-
paring what she had to what she saw white people had on television.
All of the consultants felt that they had developed a positive acade-
mic identity at the expense of their ethnic identity to varying degrees and
a good academic identity often equated being able to be of, or moving to-
ward, a higher economic social class. Even when family and community
provided supportive ethnic/cultural environments, the school devalued
nonwhite culture and contradictions emerged. Phillip, Therese, and An-
abel, for example, all said they had always had positive ethnic identities,
yet Phillip and Therese, for example, both are primarily monolingual En-
glish speakers and Anabels Spanish is limited. Spanish is not the first lan-
guage for any of the three and none are of the first generation. Anabel
had successful Chicana/o role models in her community, while Phillip and
Therese had exposure to higher education through their parents tempo-
rary, yet significant community college experience. Furthermore, Phillips
mother worked in the field of education as a paraprofessional.
Of those who had very negative, conflicted, and uncritical ethnic iden-
tity perceptions, most are fully bilingual, second generation, and spoke
Spanish as their first language. Such is the case with Juanita and Miguel,
and others such as Alicia and Alexandra who after coming to initiate the
process of Chicana/o consciousness (learning about ones history) made a
concerted effort to regain full literacy in the Spanish language. Most con-
sultants, though, said they had developed from negative to ambivalent to
positive feelings about themselves and their native home identities and cul-
ture because of their schooling and societal experiences.
There were some consultants for whom self-realization, self-identifi-
cation, and self-recognition as Chicanos or Mexican-Americans or Mex-
icanos was always known, but not necessarily appreciated. For some,
especially the younger consultants, it was both known and appreciated,
but not critically. By critical, I mean that there was no revisionist analysis
of the history behind the terms. For older consultants, a lack of self-
appreciation was more defined and pronounced especially compared to
younger consultants, who had already benefited from having socially
conscious Chicana/o educators or community activists in their K12 ex-
periences. The implicit institutional message portrays nonwhite cultures
as less valuable, even in communities where the majority is non-white.
Tracking Mechanisms and the Figured Worlds of

K12 Schooling
The following diagram can help to visually organize the academic and
ethnic identity development arrived at through the life experiences, or his-
tory-in-person accounts in the larger study. It will also serve to facilitate
the discussion of the findings in this section because it focuses on the nar-
ratives of academic and ethnic/cultural identity development that will be
explored. The box represents the rigidity of schooling institutions.
K12 Education
elementary/middle/high school
In this diagram, the interaction between community and institution is

most prevalent in the K12 phase, especially in the elementary school
years, but it is not encouraged in significant ways.
Studies claim that Chicano/Latino parents in general have low levels
of school involvement and participation. But, too much parent involve-
ment is not welcomed especially of monolingual non-English-speaking
parents. Language and cultural barriers in the formal structures of
schools impede their participation, except when teachers with an activist
consciousness, such as Juanita, intervene. Parents intending to advocate
for their childrens best interests and who are thus critical of certain edu-
cational institutional practices, are also not welcomed. As we progress to
high school, participation diminishes and is also less encouraged and wel-
comed although there is plenty of rhetoric to the contrary. All of the con-
sultants in this study reported that in most cases, both of their parents, or
at least one, was very supportive of education. In the case of the mujeres
it was often the mothers who were most vocal and encouraging.
The thicker arrow in the center of the box represents the tracking
mechanisms used to segregate smart students in the K12 system. It is
within this arrow that the successful academic identity development of
Chicana/o students is traced. The tracking of these students is manifested
through segregated ability workgroups, classes, official tracks, or schools
(i.e., figured worlds of smartness). This arrow is thin, rigid, and segre-
gated compared with the overall student population, which would fill the
entire box, because only a small number of students are allowed in gifted
tracks that in later grades are called college bound, college prep,
honors, or AP. This arrow becomes even narrower because the num-
ber of these academically successful students as identified officially in
schools, gets smaller as students progress through the system so that by
high school only a select group of students remain and are eligible for
college admission.
Of those then who enter and graduate from colleges and universities
in California, the number is even smaller. For example, in 1990, only
4.0% of Hispanics 18 and over in the state had completed a B.A. degree,
1.1% a masters, and 0.8% a doctorate or professional degree.4 Laws
such as SP-1 and SP-2 at the University of California that eliminated race
or ethnicity as a consideration for admissions as did Proposition 209,
which eliminated Affirmative Action in admissions decisions statewide in
both the University of California and the California State University sys-
tems, worsened this situation.
A similar report (Gndara, 2000, p. 3) shows that the numbers of
Chicanos/Latinos entering higher education in the state significantly de-
clined post-209, especially in the University of California system. In
1997, while affirmative action was still in effect, 13.2% of the entering
freshman at the University of California were Chicano/Latino (of this
11.9% were Mexican-American). This percentage dropped to only 11.8
(and 8.8 for Mexican-Americans) in 1998the first year in which the
provisions of Proposition 209 were imposed. This report also concludes
that those numbers are more significant at the University of California at
Los Angeles (UCLA) and at Berkeley in the University of California sys-
tem and at CSU San Diego and Cal Poly Pomona in the California State
University system. The numbers of Chicanas/os, like those in this study,
is minuscule compared to the larger K12 Hispanic student population in
the state that in the academic year 20002001 accounted for 43.2% of
the total student population (California Department of Education, 2002).
The university continues to be an isolating experience, especially for stu-
dents coming from highly segregated Chicana/o, Latina/o neighborhoods,
as did some of the consultants in this study.
Despite the large demographic presence, the arrow parallel to the
academic identity development track arrow representing the ethnic/cul-
tural identity development is broken. It is broken because there is no con-
stant flow of support for the healthy and complete ethnic/cultural
development of Chicana/o students in schools, except through commu-
nity and family support networks usually not complimented in school
structures and in the official curriculum. In the experiences of younger
consultants this ethnic/cultural identity line is sporadically nurtured by
the presence of a socially conscious Chicana/o, Latina/o teacher in the
K12 system, especially in high school. But that complimentary support
is sporadic because the overall presence of Hispanic teachers in Califor-
nia was only 13.5% of the entire teaching force in 20002001 (Califor-
nia Department of Education, 2002, p. 213), and not all Hispanic
teachers have a critical identity consciousness.
This number of educationally mobile Chicana/o students is thus quite
small, not only in the state of California, but nationally. Census data
Table 1
Educational Attainment, Overall Hispanic- and Mexican-Descent
Population in the United States
Total Overall Hispanic Mexican

Less than 9th Grade 7.0% 32.3%
9th12th Grade
(no diploma) 8.9% 16.8%
High School 33.1% 26.4%
Some College or AA 25.4% 17.7%
BA 17% 5.1%
Adv. Degree 8.6% 1.8%
BA 25.6% 6.9%
(2000) summarized in table 1 reveals the following national educational

attainment percentages for Mexican and Mexican-descent populations in
the United States as compared to the overall Hispanic population; keep in
mind that Cuban-American educational attainment levels exceed those of
non-Hispanic whites. The number of Mexican-American students who
are educationally successful is indeed a small percentage. That issue itself
should raise questions of access and equity for socially conscious educa-
tors, policy makers, education researchers, and activists.
This is especially alarming given that the total Hispanic population in
the state of California was 32.4%, with Mexican residents and U.S. citi-
zens of Mexican-descent accounting for 25% of the total California pop-
ulation in 2000. The Hispanic population also accounted for over 50%
of the K12 dropouts in 20002001 and only 32.48% of the high school
graduates.5 All of the consultants interviewed are part of this tiny group
of people of working-class origins who have been educationally mobile
by participating in the figured worlds of educational success; thus, having
access to learn the practices of the middle-class habitus. The Chicana/o
group is even smaller than the mainstream Hispanic category because
not all people of Mexican descent self-identify as Chicana/o, and even less
develop a critical identity consciousness.
Overall Findings
The findings of this data focusing on life histories and on the development
of a positive academic identity through the figured worlds of academic
success, are for the most part consistent with those found in Gndaras
(1995, p. 114) study on the educational mobility of low-income Chicanos.
Her study is historically significant because it documented Chicana/o
educational mobility during a period when opportunities were opening

up for minorities. Gndara found the following to be important charac-
teristics for low-income Chicanos/as who want to access higher education:
(1) the importance of parental support, (2) a hard work ethic and the view
of hard work as a mobility strategy, (3) family myths or folklore that cre-
ates a culture of possibility where mobility is possible, (4) and an intense
personal drive and persistence. All of these characteristics coupled with
the opportunity to have access to college-bound curriculum and to infor-
mation and resources on the possibility of college attendance were of most
importance in achieving higher education. Similar findings were found in
this study.
All of the consultants had parental support; in cases where both par-
ents did not support educational attainment at least one was very sup-
portive. Because of language barriers, lack of formal schooling, or other
factors, many parents did not know how to support education, but were
always supportive of their children. All, but especially those children who
more directly identified with working-class culture in this study, had a
hard work ethic and often worked with their parents early on. This car-
ried through to college where people like Therese worked three jobs
through college and was currently working part time and running her
own consulting business while finishing her Ph.D.
Several consultants expressed a folklore of wealth in their familys
past. Anabel, for example, described her mother as a working-class
snob. Andrews collective family memory recalled being landowners and
losing that land in the 1800s after the U.S. invasion of New Mexico. This
collective and family history might have been part of the motivation for
his educational mobility, but also for his identification with Reies Lopez
Tijerina and the Chicano movement. Nearly all of the consultants recall
and still feel they have a strong personal drive. Phillip, for example, re-
called this as always striving to be the best. I wanted to be the best at
anything I did, so I wanted to be the best in school, the best soccer player,
the best at football. . . . So college to me came as part of that motivation
to be the best.
All of the consultants were persistent and goal oriented because they
knew that educational mobility was a possibility. Such is the case of Johnny,
for whom the possibility of being in the honors track was a reality because
his older brother was already in one.
In terms of access to the college-bound curriculum, with the few ex-
ceptions discussed, all of the consultants were identified as smart early
on. This identification was really an exclusive invitation and recruitment
into the figured worlds of tracking through ability groups, classes, pro-
grams, or schools that eventually got them into college-bound tracks in
high school. Alicia is the only exception. Positive reinforcement in terms
of academic achievement was influential in most of the cases since they

were responsible for the students drive and persistence. For those tracked
early, this contributed to a very positive, but often judgmental academic
identity that viewed students in lower tracks as dumb, or lazy.
Tracking, along with peers, older siblings, partners, and minority recruit-
ment programs provided the main means to access resources and infor-
mation (social capital) about college and financial aid through the figured
worlds of educational success.
The main differences with Gndaras work are that more established
Chicano/a teachers and student organizations now have an effect on com-
munity life and on Chicana/o students in the K12 system by impacting
the lives of students and by advocating for them and their parents (for
further discussion on the impact of community activists see Urrieta,
2003a). By providing opportunities for self-recognition and by motivat-
ing them, students like Julin are presented with a possibility usually not
consideredattending a university. Higher education is usually not con-
sidered a possibility because of the working-class habitus that has histor-
ically positioned Latinas/os as not being college bound. Access to the
knowledge and practices of the secondary habitus (the middle class) cre-
ate the aspirations for educational mobility in those selected students.
And the aspirations are created by participation in the figured worlds of
smartness that make educational attainment an accessible possibility and
that create a positive academic identity. Recall that identities are in effect
also the outcomes of figured world participation. Jaime, for instance, was
recruited to the university he now attends because of his academic iden-
tity even though he had already decided to attend a technical institute.
This study differs from Gndaras by tracing along with academic
identity development the ethnic/cultural identity development of Chi-
canas/os prior to attending the college campus. The findings indicate that
there is no consistent support system for the healthy ethnic/cultural iden-
tity development of Chicana/o students, even when strong family and
community support networks exist. The U.S. educational system and so-
ciety at large do not support the positive ethnic/cultural identity develop-
ment of non-whitestream cultures. Thus, students developed either
negative, ambivalent, or positive, yet uncritical views of themselves, their
home cultures, communities, and society in general.
Orchestrating Habitus and Figured Worlds

The goal of this chapter is to speculate how a few select Latinas/os who
have a working-class primary habitus (upbringing) are able to develop a
secondary habitus that allows them to play the (middle-class) game,
while most others are not. According to Bourdieu, the secondary habitus,
if it is acquired at all, is acquired through social institutions like schools

or through other forms of secondary habitus formations. Habitus is thus
a broader macro-structural, sociohistorical outcome that creates the dis-
positions of being working class. Important to remember, however, is
that to use the concept of the habitus to essentialize to entire groups is
also problematic and for that reason I recognize that not all working-
class people share exactly the same dispositions.
Figured worlds in this chapter are more local and temporal, and
function like habitus but at a more micro-level (although they can func-
tion at the macro-level as well). Figured worlds, like habitus, distribute
power and teach its participants how power works, both in society at
large (the habitus) in relation to the figured world and its participants,
and within the figured world. From figured worlds people can emerge
with altered identities.
In this study, all of the participants claimed to be of a working-class
upbringing, yet because they possessed some of what are believed to be
middle-class and whitestream dispositions, they highlight that the group
labeled as Latina/o working class is not a collective whole. For some of
the consultants in this study, those dispositions included being able to read
in kindergarten, being articulate, knowing the story of the Mayflower, rec-
ognizing a bonnet, or simply being able to speak English. Furthermore,
those middle-class and whitestream dispositions were recognized by teach-
ers (the representatives of whitestream culture and its institutional agents)
and are thus recruited, or invited into the figured worlds of smartness (i.e.,
educational success).
The figured worlds of smartness (e.g., ability groups) position its par-
ticipants in relation to society as whole, in relation to their average and
slower peers, and in relation to each other. In these figured worlds peo-
ple are ordered and ranked (i.e., the smartest and the valedictorian) and
power is distributed to the group in relation to its place in society and to
its members in relation to each other. All the members of the honors
track, for example, have a positive academic identity and are considered to
be smart. But, not everyone within this figured world has an equal claim
to smartness, and some members are considered to be smarter than others.
These figured worlds, however, are the entry point that grant access to
the material and symbolic resources and whitestream cultural capital that
leads to higher education. Higher education, in a symbolic and not just
material way, is the entry point into the middle-class habitus. Keep in
mind that someone can win the lottery, for example, and become materi-
ally wealthy, but still not have the dispositions of the middle-class habitus,
nor the credentials (symbolic capital) to grant her entry into that world.
All of the consultants in this study were recruited into the figured
worlds of smartness early on, even though they were of a primarily work-
ing-class upbringing. Through the symbolic power distributed in these fig-

ured worlds, consultants emerged with a positive academic identity and ac-
cess to higher education, even if at their ethnic/cultural identitys expense.
Recall Aguirres statement cited earlier, I have lost some of myself in that
(academic) journey. I must concur that so have I. The consultants in this
study, however, are actively engaged in regaining that ethnic/cultural iden-
tity through Chicanismo/a,6 while a vast majority of successful Hispanics
and Latinos/as are not. People like Richard Rodrguez and Linda Chvez,
for example, have completely lost themselves in the process and uncon-
sciously bought into middle-class, whitestream culture and values.
Conclusion
Developing a positive academic identity is essential in gaining access to
educational and social class mobility. Tracking mechanisms like ability
grouping, magnet programs, and honors tracks are the figured worlds
that select a few Latina/o working-class students who are recruited into
them and from which they emerge with the aspirations and whitestream
cultural capital to have access to higher education. The outcome is that a
handful have access to social class mobility and most do not. Education
thus functions as an enabling and disabling system.
To conclude, I wish to state clearly that I do not advocate that track-
ing is a means for working-class students to have access to higher educa-
tion, even though it is for a select few. If anything, this system of seriated,
hierarchical power distribution serves to maintain the inequalities of U.S.
society and a racialized, consumerized, meritocratic system of deceptive
myths and promises of empty dreams to most working-class people.
Moreover, social class mobility should not be at the expense of ones eth-
nic/cultural identity. And when the symbolic violence of internal commu-
nity division, internalized oppression, and self-hate within the Latina/o
community are also outcomes, the hegemony of whitestream culture and
white supremacy are in place.
Notes
The author wishes to express his gratitude to the Spencer Foundation and the
Gates Millennium Scholars Program for funding this research and to the editors
of this book for reading and commenting on previous drafts of this chapter. An
earlier version of this manuscript was presented at the annual meeting of the
America Educational Research Association, San Diego, 2004.
1. The reference to consultants in this chapter is another critical attempt
and choice of wording referring to informants or even previously known sub-
jects. This reference hopes to problematize the relationships, or lack of, which
develop or do not develop while conducting research and the power dynamics in-
volved that often exploit, misrepresent, or simply dismiss consultant knowledge as
secondary to researcher knowledge. The notion of consultants shifts the roles and
treats them as experts in community knowledge, actively involved throughout
the research process; thus the reference to them as consultants rather than infor-
mants, participants, or subjects (Baugh, 1983; Hinson, 2000; Lassiter, 1998).
2. As a former eighth-grade teacher working with bilingual students, it be-
came very apparent to me that some students already knew that they were not
going to be academically successful. They were aware of the fact that they were
not considered smart and that they were enrolled in classes where students like
them were lucky if they graduated from high school. On many occasions students
communicated to me that trying to convince them that they could be anything
they wanted to be career wise was indeed a deceptive lie on my part.
3. In this chapter, first generation refers to the immigrant generation not
born in the United States, second generation refers to the those born in the United
States from immigrant parents, third generation refers to those born of second
generation parents, and so forth.
4. According to the 1990 Census data in a California Postsecondary Educa-
tion Commission Report, April 2001.
5. California Department of Education.
6. Chicanismo/a are the male-oriented and female-oriented ideological foun-
dations behind the politics of the Chicana/o identity, namely, self-determination,
an end to material and symbolic colonization, and to community empowerment.
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6
HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS EXPLORATION OF
CLASS DIFFERENCES IN A MULTICULTURAL
LITERATURE CLASS
Richard Beach, Daryl Parks,

Amanda Thein, and Timothy Lensmire
One of the interesting political developments since the 1980s is the degree
to which white working-class people, particularly males, are voting and
registering as Republicans. White working-class males continue to iden-
tify with the Republican Party despite the fact that conservative Republi-
can economic policies have resulted in no mean wage increase since the
1970s; large-scale reductions in well-paying manufacturing jobs; down-
turns in union memberships; and increased concentration of wealth, re-
sulting in a disparity in income gaps between rich and poor, lack of
affordable health care, cuts in benefits/retirements, and increasing tuition
for higher education necessary for many jobs (Frank, 2004).
These political attitudes represent a shift away from the1930s and
1940s in which many white working-class males participated in Socialist
and working-class organizations that articulated populist issues of class
and government support for working-class people (Frank, 2004). In our
own state of Minnesota, up until the 1970s, there was a strong, progres-
sive, pro-labor/union tradition that successfully fought for and passed pro-
labor legislation and relatively high taxes for social services and schools.
Since that time, union membership has declined and the Republican Party
has now gained control of most of the states government, resulting in pro-
business, anti-labor legislation, large tax cuts for the wealthy, and cuts in
job training, education, health care, and social services designed to help
working-class people.
141
142 Richard Beach et al.
In his review of economic history, Richard Ohmann (2003) notes that

a major shift in economic policy occurred beginning in the 1970s with the
rise of conservative and neoliberal agendas. Prior to the 1970s, the Amer-
ican economy was organized around highly stable companies, what David
Harvey (1989) describes as Fordism. In the 1970s, the breakup of these
companies and the rise of fast-track economic theories resulted in the
instability of flexible accumulation through new sections of produc-
tion, new ways of providing financial services, new markets, and, above
all, greatly intensified rations of commercial, technological, and organiza-
tional innovation (Harvey, 1989, p. 147). Ohmann notes that the in-
stability and excesses of this casino capitalism (p. 33) has resulted in a
shift from stable, well-paying, long-term, full-time jobs with benefits (Ford
believed in paying workers so that they could afford his cars and decent
housing) to flex-time, part-time, and temporary labor; subcontracting
and out-sourcing; job sharing, home work, and piece work; workfare
and prison labor (p. 34). This shift since the 1970s has resulted in a par-
allel shift away from the New Deal politics of strong government support
programs and government regulation to a diminution of government sup-
port and deregulation, resulting in funding cuts for education, job train-
ing, health care, social security, child-care, and housing, particularly for
low-income people.
These shifts have placed working-class people in a double bind. On
the one hand, the transformation from manufacturing to knowledge-
economy jobs requires increased higher education beyond high school.
On the other hand, cuts in state and federal spending have resulted in
large increases in tuition at state colleges and universities (tuition at the
University of Minnesota increased by 38% from 2001 to 2004), pric-
ing many working-class students out of higher education. A study by
The Century Foundation (2004) found that at four-year institutions,
two out of every three students from the wealthiest quartile enroll
within two years of high school graduation, compared with one student
in five from the bottom socioeconomic quartile. Seventy-four percent of
students at the nations top 146 colleges come from the richest socio-
economic quartile, and just 3% come from the poorest quartile. The
fact that a wealthy student is twenty-five times more likely to be at-
tending these colleges than a poor student is partially due to reductions
in Pell Grant funding, most of which was designed to support low-in-
come families. In the 1980s, Pell Grant funding covered nearly 60% of
total costs of attending four-year colleges; now it covers only about
40% (The Century Foundation, 2004).
Americans dream of rising expectations for each new generation
(Apple, 2003). All of this leads to the question, why do working-class
Exploration of Class Differences 143
white males support a conservative political agenda that has benefited

upper-income people and hurt working-class people? One explanation of
the appeal of a conservative agenda has to do with cultural values that
take precedence over economic realities. Thomas Frank (2004) argues that
working-class white males respond positively to a political appeal to cul-
tural authenticity associated with basking in the easy solidarity of pa-
triotism, hard work, and the universal ability to identify soybeans in a
field (p. 40). This prototype is set against what is perceived to be the ef-
fete, intellectual, snobbish, morally questionable, white-collar worker
aligned with the knowledge-economy that has excluded white working-
class males, particularly those without advanced education. Frank quotes
a Missouri farmer who described the kind of work he does as measured
in bushels, pounds, shingles nailed, and bricks laid, rather than in the fussy
judgments that make up office employee reviews (p. 39). Politicians such
as President Bush seek these voters identification by emphasizing down-
home, conservative values, including an appeal to evangelical voters
through references to faith-based initiatives. This appeal to working-
class people masks the economic realities of small-family farmers and
business owners who have been put out of business by agribusiness con-
glomerates and corporations who funnel millions of dollars to fund con-
servatives political campaign. As Frank notes: Deregulated capitalism is
what has allowed the Wal-Marts to crush local businesses across the Mid-
west and, even more importantly, what has driven agriculture, the regions
raison dtre, to a state of near-collapse (p. 46).
Society Economic Policies

To avoid focusing the blame on corporate owners, Frank documents
that ways in which conservative politicians direct the blame on liberal,
secular intellectuals associated with New Deal/Great Society economic
policies. He also shows how these politicians legitimize their claim to
making economic arguments through cultural appeals based on anti-
abortion, gay marriage, and anti-gun control issues as well as evangeli-
cal Christian values.
Working-class adolescents are very much aware of the problematic
status of their low-income family world and the unfairness of the overall
education and community-support system that provides little opportunity
for future success (Beach, Lundell, and Jung, 2002; Eckert, 1989; Phelan,
Davidson, and Yu, 1998). As one social worker noted (Sadowski, 2003,
p. 25): They really feel that they cannot make it. This is not just reflective
of the family of origin from which they come, but from looking at society
as a whole. These kids are not stupid; they are just aware of what is going
on socioeconomically.
This sense of resignation suggests the need for educators to chal-
lenge conservatives appeal to adolescents by interrogating the values in-
herent in these appeals. If adolescents begin to perceive the problematic
nature of these appeals, they may be less likely to support such policies
and look more favorably at the kinds of alterative progressive agendas of
the 1930s and 1940s.
Working-class students also face a diminution of support for public ed-
ucation due to cuts in school funding, education that might provide them
with cultural capital. James P. Gee (2002) argues that a primary difference
between the Fordist Old Capitalism, which created an expansive middle
class based on consumption practices, and the New Capitalism, is that
the New Capitalism is marked by the capacity to not only build ones port-
folio, but to also manage and use it to define oneself as being the right
sort of person. If you have no Portfolio or dont view yourself in Portfolio
terms, then you are surely in the lower class(p. 63).
This redefinition of class points to the importance of cultural capital
available to middle- and upper-middle-class adolescents through family
and institutional resources, particularly in terms of expensive after-school
activities/technology tools, resources often not available for working-
class adolescents. Even if affirmative action programs are available for
working-class students, these students may therefore have difficulty ac-
cumulating certain credentials necessary for admissions to elite schools.
And, while working-class students do succeed in academia, their struggles
are rarely made explicit, particularly in terms of acquiring the cultural
capital associated with being the right sort of person. This was evident
in a longitudinal study tracking the development of Crystal, a rural work-
ing-class female, over a five-year period from her senior year through
four years of college (Payne-Bourcy and Chandler-Olcott, 2003). In high
school, she posed as middle class by appropriating middle-class literacy
practices, but continually struggled during college because she had diffi-
culty linking these practices to the dominant discourses operating in her
college courses. She also lacked the resources, support systems, and ac-
cess to faculty afforded to middle-class students. Her high school and
college coursework rarely addressed issues of class difference shaping
her experience, creating a sense of alienation from academic work. While
her English course dealt with issues of language and power related to
students identity, No real dialectic was established that allowed for
learners to move back and forth in their consideration of personal, com-
munity, and societal issues. Such a dialectic would have allowed the ex-
ploration of social class but also would have allowed inquiry into the
ways that social class intersects and interacts with such factors as gender,
race, and the sense of geographic place that was so important to Crystal
and many of her rural peers (p. 582).
Laura Payne-Bourcy and Kelly Chandler-Olcott recommend that sec-
ondary literature classes directly address portrayals of class difference
in texts as a means of helping students such as Crystal examine the often
implicit relationship between class and power underlying her struggles.
Loss of Working-Class Workplace Community

The shift to New Capitalism also resulted in the loss of traditional social-
ization trajectories into a workplace community associated with defining
ones masculinity, in which young workers followed in the footsteps of
parents, relatives, and peers as mentors who help them move seamlessly
from secondary school to a strong workplace community supported by
labor unions. Lacking that traditional socialization trajectory into mas-
culinity, adolescents then turn to alternative forms of male-bonding com-
munities as substitutes for the lost workplace bonding. One study of
adolescent white males in northeast Britain found that, faced with few
employment opportunities, these males turned to active participation
in soccer fan clubs involving physical, ritual display of team support
(Nayak, 2003). These males also closely identified with their local com-
munity site or family, rejecting work that required them to move to an-
other community, a reflection of their need for symbolic stability to
counteract the instability of a shifting, global economy. While it is easy to
dismiss these practices as doing little to alter the economic or political
systems that undermine their self-worth, these findings point to the larger
human need for a community that preserves a lost sense of dignity.
Other research finds that participation in sports, particularly foot-
ball, is equated with masculinity, an identity construction mediated by
discourses and narratives of violence and toughness (Burgess, Edwards,
and Skinner, 2003). Other research indicates that white college athletes
who strongly identified with athletics as constituting their identities were
more likely to subscribe to the importance of their racial identity, while
black athletes were less likely to subscribe to the importance of their
racial identity, suggesting that active participation in sports may only
enhance white athletes sense of white privilege (Brown et al., 2003).
White Working-Class Males Identities

and Attitudes toward Affirmative Action
Conservatives also build a cultural appeal to white working-class males
around the notion of white privilege under attack. Politicians since the
1800s have employed a race-card strategy of pitting low-income
whites against low-income people of color by arguing that people of

color are taking away your jobs. In his documentation of the evolu-
tion of white privilege, David R. Roediger (2002) noted that in the
1800s, wealthy whites provided poor whites with small tokens of eco-
nomic privilege and social status that served to create an economic hi-
erarchy that set low-income whites against blacks, and positioned
blacks as inferior others. To construct their sense of white privilege,
whites distance themselves from what they perceive to be low-level
slave-labor work done by blacks and Latinos and attempt to achieve
what they perceive as middle-class status in terms of not being or living
near blacks or Latinos.
At the same time, in a post-civil rights era, whites seldom adopt bla-
tant expressions of bigotry. Instead, they adopt a discourse of what Ed-
uardo Bonilla-Silva (2001) describes as color-blind racism, as evident
in statements of denial such as Everyone is equal, but . . .; or I am not
prejudiced, but . . .; in arguments such as, I didnt own slaves, so Im
not a racist, or in denials of the structural nature of discrimination as re-
flected in critiques of affirmative action programs (Blum, 2002; Reisigl
and Wodak, 2001; Wiegman, 1999). They adopt this stance of color-
blind racism because they are participating in an institutionalized eco-
nomic system that privileges whites at the expense of people of color.
While they may claim that race does not matter, they still support sys-
tems that perpetuate economic inequality.
This discourse of color-blind racism is reflected in conservatives
attacks on affirmative action policies related to college admissions and to
job-hiring practices. Conservatives frame the issue of affirmative action in
terms of personal or individual benefits or lossesthe fact that affirma-
tive action limits whites from achieving, as some argue, their rights to a
college education or employment (hooks, 2000).
This race-card appeal has been effective in setting working-class
whites and people of color against each other, shifting the blame for job
losses and flat wages away from fast-track capitalism and corporate
downsizing. In one study, white working-class males perceived affirma-
tive action as an unfair quota system that gives blacks and Hispanics
jobs they believed should be theirs (Fine and Weis, 1998). They also per-
ceived blacks and Hispanics as abusing government programs, while
whites use these programs only on a temporary basis as a necessary
means of supporting their families. These males therefore defined them-
selves as distinct from the otheras not engaging in the unfair prac-
tices associated with blacks and Hispanics. Attributions of laziness were
evident in a survey in which only 16 percent of whites ranked blacks on
the hardworking end of a scale; just under half ranked blacks on the
lazy end of the scale (Feagin, 2000, p. 211).
Conservatives also attack affirmative action as one more governmen-

tal imposition on themselves as free agents who should not be con-
stricted by institutional or governmental forces (Center for Individual
Rights, 2004).
The issue of loss of job opportunities and competitive college admis-
sions is framed in terms of race rather than class in order to appeal to a
working-class white audience racial resentment. The argument is made
that lack of employment opportunities and college admissions/financial
support are due to government programs favoring people of color and
not whites (Guinier and Torres, 2003). This argument serves to pit whites
against people of color as a scapegoat for their problems, as opposed to
focusing on cutbacks in government support programs designed for all
low-income people.
These critiques of affirmation are also framed in terms of individual
rights as opposed to rectifying institutional practices. In an analysis of
college classroom discussions, Frances Maher and Mary Kay Tetreault
(1997) noted repeated instances in which white students perceived them-
selves as individuals, while describing people of color as groups. They
perceived issues of affirmative action as a threat to their individual mo-
bility rather than a response to a group history of discrimination
(p. 327). As a result, the white students could not see that White people,
too, were not simply individuals with common personal experiences, but
differentially placed members of an unequal social order (p. 336).
Framing affirmative action around individual rights and personal at-
tributes fails to recognize its larger purpose of transforming what have
been exclusive institutional practices. As Robert K. Fullinwider (1998, p.
14) argues: The purpose of affirmative action is not to distribute bene-
fits and burdens according to personal desertor merit or need; it is to
change institutions. It is to make white institutions multi-racial. Now, if
that is our purpose, and if that purpose is sufficiently compelling, then the
personal deservingness of the beneficiaries and victims of affirmative ac-
tion is beside the point.
These attitudes toward affirmative action are also expressed by mid-
dle- and upper-middle-class whites. White lawyers expressed negative at-
titudes toward a mandated affirmative action program at their law firm
(Pierce, 2003). They described persons of color hired at their firm as un-
qualified and not fitting in. They consistently adopted a stance of in-
nocence related to their racist treatment of these persons of color, a
stance that reflected a discourse of individualism:
As Jennifer Pierce (2003, p. 213) noted, By defining social life as the
sum total of conscious and deliberate individual activities, these white
lawyers are able to ignore the very systematic practices they themselves
deploy, practices that exclude and marginalize African-American lawyers.
Attitudes toward affirmative action also differ according to gender.

Bonilla-Silva (2003) finds that white working-class males were less likely
than working-class females to espouse progressive perspectives given
their traditional gender role in the economy:
It has been the white male workers who have historically supported
the racial order. Why? Because whether in periods of economic security
or insecurity, white masculinity has provided white men with economic
and noneconomic benefits. During good times, working-class men have
been the kings of the castle (the home) and, during bad times (when
their women have had to work in the paid labor force), they have
been able to maintain a sense of control by demanding a traditional pa-
triarchal organization of the home and by patrolling neighborhoods
and the family from racial pollution. (p. 145, italics in original)
Bonilla-Silva (2003) also finds that working-class females were often

most likely to espouse more progressive perspectives on issues of affirma-
tive action because they were more likely to have close personal relation-
ships with blacks, resulting in a sense of solidarity with working-class
blacks, not shared with white working-class males.
At the same time, white working-class males do not blame lack of ac-
cess to higher education or jobs on conservative policies that redistribute
wealth to upper-middle-class whites. As Michelle Fine and Lois Weis
(1998) note: None challenged economic restructuring or the historic priv-
ileging of white maleness in the economy. Left totally unexamined, and
even unrecognized, by working-class white men, many of whom are highly
marginal in this economy, is the role of white elites who self-consciously
closed industries or enabled legislation which moved capital across state
and international borders, thus interrupting far more white male jobs than
affirmative action ever was intended to or ever could (pp. 2728).
Framing issues of affirmative action around individual benefits and
burdens as opposed to transforming institutional forces reflects a larger
historical shift from collective social and labor movements to a conserv-
ative/neoliberal discourse of individualism that challenges notions of
community action and collectivity (Aronowitz, 2003). In that discourse,
the individual is assumed to be responsible for their own status or suc-
cess, as opposed to collective efforts of groups to organize and define
value as a community.
High School Students Perceptions of Identity in

Terms of Race and Class
All of this shapes the ways in which high school students construct their
identities in school contexts in terms of racial as opposed to class differ-
ences. Based on her ethnographic analysis of twelfth-grade working-and

middle-class females in a Central Valley California high school, Julie Bet-
tie (2003) found that these female students perceived differences between
each other primarily in terms of race as opposed to class. Mexican-Amer-
ican working-class females, for example, wore darker lipstick or nail pol-
ish to connote the fact that they were not be perceived as white. Similarly,
white working-class females defined themselves as not being affiliated
with practices associated with Mexican-American students.
At the same time, despite their marginalization in the school by the
school staff, both Mexican-American and white working-class females
had difficulty critiquing the schools institutional bias against working-
class students and their favoritism toward middle-class students. Given
the middle-class culture of high schools, even teachers from working-class
backgrounds adopted a middle-class discourse that constructs their own
and students identities around physical control/order, constraints on
emotional expression, neatness, and so forth, as a way of marginalizing
what is perceived to be undesirable aspects of working-class culture,
often framed in terms of race. As a result, the teachers did not make
explicit allegiances to their working class backgrounds.
The school staff as well as middle-class students frequently explained
problems in working-class students academic performance by adopting a
deficit model in which working-class family practices were perceived as
lacking in comparison to middle-class families, which was perceived as
supportive, educated, warm, drug-free, articulate, confident, and hard-
working. As a result, the working-class white students adopted a subor-
dinate habitus that took the form of resisting or not participating in
activities celebrating preppy status such as school dances or pep rallies.
While they believed that the middle-class students were often caught up
in an insincere obsession with achievement markers and status, the Mex-
ican-American working-class females associated this more with acting
white than with class differences. Bettie posits that they were framing
differences in terms of race rather than class mainly because they lacked
a discourse for discussing class difference: Without a critical discourse
on class, they were unable to locate themselves more clearly in relation to
their various peers or to locate themselves historically in class terms in
relationship to parents and grandparents (2003, p. 81).
Bettie argues that the students lack of a larger discourse for dis-
cussing class differences reflects the larger societys propensity to use race
to trump class differences. She cites the example of Californias Proposi-
tion 209 that eliminated state affirmative-action programs based on the
argument that income rather than race is a more important admissions
criterion. Working-class whites who supported the repeal of affirmative
action programs perceive race as brown, and assumed that they were
being discriminated against by such programs as victims of reverse dis-

crimination. In reality, she found that when the white working-class stu-
dents reached their senior year in the vocational education track, they
lacked the coursework necessary to go to college:
Although white working-class students experienced a feeling of un-

fairness in relation to preps regarding educational achievement and col-
lege, they lacked a discourse of class that could explain their own and
their parents failure and that would allow them to articulate the class
antagonism they felt toward middle-class students. In its absence, a dis-
course of individualism and meritocracy helped render institutionalized
class inequality invisible and consequently left white working-class stu-
dents feeling like individually flawed losers. . . . Ironically, because it
offered class instead of race, not in addition to race, the discourse sur-
rounding Proposition 209 encouraged students to understand inequality
solely in racial terms and in the end worked as a racial project creating
an alliance among whites across class and among Mexican Americans
across class. Because any clear understanding of institutionalized class
inequality is missing from U.S. popular and political discourse, class
was read as racial code and used to rearticulate white privilege.
(pp. 17475, 176)
Bettie argues that by thinking of class as a performance allows for

the potential of challenging deterministic notions that class origins limit
potential for changing or developing new identities, as well as the ways
in which class differences are institutionally or politically perpetuated
and challenged.
All of this suggests a pedagogical agenda to help adolescents interro-
gate their discourses of individualism for framing issues of race and class
difference. It also suggests the need to help them move beyond simply
defining difference in terms of race to help them recognize how class
shapes their perceptions of difference.
Entertaining Hybrid Discourses

One approach for helping students interrogate discourses of individual-
ism is by responding to multicultural literature that portrays alternative
discourses of race, class, and gender. Engaging with alternative, hybrid
discourses serves to challenge students status quo discourses, leading
them to interrogate the limitations of these discourses of individualism
constituting their attitudes toward affirmative action.
In responding to and discussing multicultural literature, students are
exploring dialogic tensions associated with hybrid discourses, leading to
what Cynthia Lewis (2004) describes as a re-articulation of their existing,
often fixed, stable discourses. In research on white teachers book club

discussions on teaching muliticultural literature in a rural Iowa town,
Lewis and her colleagues find that teachers begin to interrogate a dis-
course of liberal humanism and individualism that frames racism as a
matter of individual prejudice and choice by adopting a counterdiscourse
of critical multiculturalism (Lewis, Ketter, and Fabos, 2001). Some
teachers in the group resisted the groups prevailing white privilege by
taking up a discourse of critical multiculturalism that focuses on insti-
tutional racism portrayed in the literary texts they were teaching.
Through their discussions and exploration of hybrid discourses, the
teachers were exploring alternative stances and positions that served to
redefine their own identities and teaching practices.
Adolescents Responses to
Multicultural Literature
To illustrate the ways in which white working-class males may entertain
these hybrid discourses, we cite some of their responses to multicultural
literature taken from a study on high school students responses to multi-
cultural literature that was conducted at Thompson High School (a pseu-
donym), a diverse, urban high school of 1,550 students in a working
class section of a large, Midwestern city (Beach et al., 2003). This school
was chosen for its diversity (the student body is 42% white and 58% stu-
dents of color: 30% Asian, 17% African, 10% Hispanic, and 1% Native
American) and because the recent demographic shifts in the school and the
community created a unique site for studying racial and social class ten-
sions. Students in this study were enrolled in a multicultural literature
class for eleventh- and twelfth-grade students who receive college credit
for taking this course while still in high school. The 14 participant stu-
dents in the class consisted of 8 females and 6 males: 8 white, 3 Asian-
American, 1 Hispanic, and 1 student of African descent. Most of these
students can be identified as working class given their parents occupa-
tions; of the 14 students, 2 students could be considered as middle class.
Each of the four authors participated in different ways in this study.
Richard Beach, a professor and literacy researcher at the University
of Minnesota with background experience in studying responses to mul-
ticultural literature (1997), was the primary investigator. Daryl Parks,
a doctoral student in literacy education, was the teacher of the class.
Parks, a popular English teacher in the school who has won several
teaching awards, was explicit to the students about his working-class
background experiences and how those experiences shaped his own
responses to literature. Amanda H. Thein, also a literacy researcher,
observed classroom discussions, interviewed the students, and conducted

an ethnographic analysis of the school. And Timothy Lensmire, also a
professor of literacy at the University of Minnesota, has applied critical
literacy and Bakhtian perspectives on classroom interactions in writing
workshop classrooms (2000), and is currently examining the develop-
ment of white male masculinity practices.
In the course, Parks encouraged the application of various critical
theories (Appleman, 2001), including Marxist, feminist, structuralist,
New Historical, and Critical Race Theory. Participants engaged in taped
large and small group discussions for each of the texts read in the
courseThe House on Mango Street (Cisneros, 1994), Bless Me, Ultima
(Anaya, 1978), Kindred (Butler, 1979), Their Eyes Were Watching God
(Thurston, 1986), Woman Warrior (Kingston, 1989), Obasan (Kogawa,
1993), Love Medicine (Erdrich, 1989), Smoke Signals (film), Bastard Out
of Carolina (Allison, 1992), and A Yellow Raft in Blue Water (Dorris,
1987)and wrote journal entries and essays for each of these texts. The
researchers also conducted observational analyses of the school culture.
Transcripts of selected group discussions, all interviews, and focus groups
were coded using QSR NVIVO.
The School and Classroom Culture

A key factor shaping students identities and their responses to literature
was the school and classroom culture. The school culture reflected the
largely working-class neighborhood community, which had become in-
creasingly diverse, particularly with a large influx of immigrant Hmong
people. The school culture reflected an attempt to perpetuate a past white
hegemony in resistance to this increasing diversity through school events
and traditions that harked back to a time in which the school was largely
white. This attempt to perpetuate past white privilege was most evident
in the emphasis on a discourse of competitive sports that equates school
spirit with the identity of school athlete or jocks as successful football or
hockey players on what are largely white, male teams. One student noted
that the principal likes sports players a lot cause she thinks theyre like
role models throughout the school.
Interviews with school athletes reflected their adherence to this dis-
course of competitive self-achievement that was associated with the strong
athletic tradition at Thompson. Athletes evoked narratives of hard work
and training consistent with a discourse of competition. Being involved with
sports served as an extrinsic means for students to attain self-discipline. In
order to participate in sports, students must maintain control of themselves
both in school and outside of school. When one female study participant
wrote an article for the school newspaper regarding athletes use of alcohol,
she was criticized by the schools athletic director for undermining the pos-
itive image of athletes in the school. Students, both male and female, who
were involved in athletics at Thompson, were not only supported on the
field, but also in positions of school leadership, as a form of symbolic dis-
play of the importance of physical self-control and self-discipline as central
to the school that did not allow students to leave campus during the day for
lunch and that did not provide them with any free periods.
This control extended to school events such as the annual Winter-
Fest coronation ceremony in the school gym where white students were
crowned. During this event, the gym doors were guarded by ROTC stu-
dents dressed in full regalia and carrying swords. Many students at Thomp-
son did not support such events that center around who they perceived as
the mainstream popular white students; these potentially disruptive stu-
dents were actually encouraged not to attend and were provided with
movies in classrooms.
This physical control of students was also reflected in the control of
classroom activities. Observations of classrooms indicated largely
teacher-directed activities resulting in high levels of student passivity in
which students seemed uncomfortable when given freedom to think crit-
ically and speak openly (Bettie, 2003; Yon, 2000).
The teacher of the multicultural literature class, Parks, attempted to cre-
ate a classroom culture that deviated from the larger school culture of phys-
ical and intellectual control. He valued dialogic, intellectual exploration
around issues of class and race that were rarely addressed in the larger
school culture. He also modeled ways of interrogating texts and construc-
tively challenging others, as well as providing support for expression of mi-
nority or alternative interpretations. His influence was increasingly evident
in students using notions of subtext, voices, and culture, as well as
their practice of citing textual evidence for their hypotheses.
Because Parks explicitly described his own identity as constituted by his
white, male, working-class background, he gained identification with some
of the students in the class. He frequently used stories and personal narra-
tives to situate himself within these competing discourses. Parks mediated
different class worlds of his students and these academic worlds by describ-
ing how he had learned to negotiate differences between his working-class
background experience and other worlds. He shared childhood narratives
of financial destitution, family members run-ins with the law, and the
prevalent drug culture of his factory-employed neighborhood. He also
shared anecdotal experiences of white privilege operating in the larger high
school culture and community, modeling self-critique for the male athletes.
Given the critical focus of the texts, the journal prompts, and the outside
readings, Parks believed that the structure of the course represented a de-
centering of white, male, middle-class norms. While occasional discussion
topics or foci would bring discomfort to some students, they became accus-
tomed to adopting a critical stance toward mainstream community and
school discourses. As he gained the respect of these students as one of us,
he also encouraged them to examine the limitation of their larger school sta-
tus related to their white privilege. (This focus on challenging the white
males discourses of race and class led some of the Hmong students to feel-
ings of resentment in interviews about the attention afforded on the white
students perceptions of race at the expense of the Hmong students experi-
ences with racism and class resentments.)
Parks also continually focused on the ways in which categories asso-
ciated with race and class differences were cultural constructions serving
to perpetuate social hierarchies (Bonilla-Silva, 2001). For example, dur-
ing the course, the students prepared to attend an event at a local univer-
sity that involved students from different, largely suburban, schools who
were enrolled in the College in the Schools program. The students were to
meet together to listen to a speaker discuss multicultural literature, and to
then discuss the topic with students from other schools.
Parks anticipated that because the students would be interacting with
students from different race and class backgrounds, that issues of race
and class differences might arise, particularly in terms of how some of the
largely white, suburban students perceived his students as coming from a
diverse, urban, working-class school. He sensed that his students would
encounter some stereotypical comments from some of the middle-class
suburban students; he also believed that his students had ideas of who
suburban and rural people were, and that these ideas could serve as a
basis for a discussion of race and class.
Prior to going on the field trip, he asked the students to write about
and then role-play their perceptions of a prototypical rural student and a
prototypical suburban student. The students realized the stereotypes they
employed in describing others is associated with how others may stereo-
type them. In describing the suburban students, students frequently re-
ferred to class markers, particularly money, as a feature that distinguished
themselves from their suburban counterparts. They noted that physical
markers such as dress, hair, as well as speech, served to differentiate them
from suburban students.
This activity began to foster students awareness of the culturally
constructed nature of categorieshow the categories they apply to others
and themselves shape their perceptions of others. When students encoun-
tered people who challenged these categories, they could reject the person
as inconsistent with their categories, or consider revising their categories
in ways that account for the difference represented by the person.
Parks also challenged students discourses of individualism through
activities in which students examined institutional forces shaping social
practices and public policies related to race and class difference. For ex-
ample, students read Peggy McIntoshs (1997) essay on white male priv-
ilege and discussed examples of ways in which white males are afforded
certain privileges through institutional practices in their community and
in the school. Students also read excerpts from Jonathan Kozols (1992),
Savage Inequalities, describing the conditions of schools in East St. Louis
related to lack of funding, as well as factors creating poverty in that city.
And, students explored issues of class difference as portrayed on the PBS
program, People Like Us, in terms of how institutional class markers
function to define their own and others identities. From these and from
other activities, students began to recognize how identity construction is
mediated by institutional discourses of race and class, a useful back-
ground for interpreting characters identity construction in the novels
they were reading in the course.
Given their socialization in the largely white, working-class culture of
their school, many of these students resisted what they perceive as threats
to their sense of white privilege in these discussions. At the same time,
some of these students began to recognize the value of critically examin-
ing larger economic and institutional forces shaping their identities. Hav-
ing to grapple with dialogic tensions in their lives led some students in
this course to interrogate discourses of race and class shaping their per-
spectives, an awareness critical to their ultimately adopting a political cri-
tique of the conservative fast-track economy agenda (Linkon, 1999).
Responding to Literature
In responding to the literary texts read in the course, students were expe-
riencing characters who themselves reframed their identities within shift-
ing discourses and status quo systems. For example, one of the novels
read in the course was the time-travel novel, Kindred, by Octavio Butler
(1979). In this novel, the main character, Dana, is an urban, African-
American female and professional writer living in Los Angeles in 1976.
She is transported back to the world of slavery in antebellum Maryland
in 1819 through a link to her great-grandfather and slave-owner, Rufus,
who, in her new, 1819-reality, raped her. She understands her present self
through understanding her past heritage as not only related to her white
great-grandfather, who fathered her grandmother with another slave, but
also as constructed in the contemporary urban world of Los Angeles.
In reading about Danas time travel and in constructing her identity,
the students experienced the ways in which her own perspectives on slav-
ery and white privilege were located within the pre-Civil War South and
contemporary American society. Because the novel highlights how she
perceived her identity as constructed in different ways by the discourses
operating in these two worlds, students recognized the ways in which

identities were constituted by participation in historical and cultural
worlds. They contrasted how Danas relationships with white males were
constituted by different roles, norms, tools, and beliefs operating in dif-
ferent systemsslavery versus contemporary Los Angeles. Examining
how Danas identity was constructed by conflicting discourses of slavery
and contemporary civil rights helped the students further understand how
identity is constituted by discourses. This led them to reflect on their own
identity construction as shaped by culture and history as more than
events distinct from their everyday lives, but as something that actually
influenced their lives.
Another novel read in the course was Dorothy Allisons (1992)
novel, Bastard Out of Carolina, a National Book Award finalist, which
portrays a white, working-class South Carolinian family grappling with
issues of economic oppression, job discrimination, and sexual abuse in
the 1950s. The novel portrays a controlling, violent father, Daddy Glen
who was raised in a middle-class family but who has lost all of his money
and is now destituteand the female adolescent main character and nar-
rator, Bone. After Bones biological father dies, her mother, Anney, re-
marries Daddy Glen, who begins to sexually abuse her. Once the abuse
is revealed, Anney sides with Glen against Bone, who then turns to her
lesbian aunt for parenting and survives what was a brutal childhood.
In reading this novel, the students examined the ways in which dis-
courses of class are used to marginalize and stigmatize working-class peo-
ple through categories such as white trash, hardworking/lazy, and
respectful/shameful (Baker, 2000). Bones birth certificate falsely cate-
gorizes her as illegitimate, something that her mother attempts to
change during the entire novel against a corrupt legal system that positions
working-class people as the other, in ways that benefit those in power
an echo of the current Republican strategy. Allison (as quoted in Baker,
2000) describes her interest in the politics of they, why human beings
fear and stigmatize the different while secretly dreading that they might be
one of the different themselves. . . .[A]ll the other categories by which we
categorize and dismiss each otherneed to be excavated from the inside
(p. 122, italics in original). She posits that the horror of class prejudice,
racism, sexism, and homophobia is that they persuade people that their se-
curity depends on the oppression of others, that for some to have good
lives there must be others whose lives are truncated and brutal (p. 126).
Having read novels only about poor people of color, the students in
the course were surprised by the fact that they were reading about poor
whites. One Hmong student noted, It is different because the characters
are white. It criticizes white people. It is something new about this book.
In responding to the novel, students examined the fact that the mid-
dle-class characters consistently marginalize the working-class characters
in terms of institutional constraintsby putting up barriers to the courts,
schooling, and employment. However, some of the white students were
reluctant to frame the characters practices in institutional terms related
to the plight of working-class whites, preferring to perceive the characters
through a discourse of individualism.
By responding to these and other novels in the course, students were
interpreting characters increasingly awareness of how systems shaped
their identitieshow slavery shaped Danas past and present self, and
how class structures shaped Glen and Bone. This led some of them to en-
gaged in a similar shift in perspectives about how institutions shape their
own identities and stances.
Students Attitudes toward Affirmative Action

These different perceptions toward the relationships between institutions
and individual practices were evident in the ways in which the students in
the course responded to issues related to affirmative action. Many of the
students in the course expressed opposition to affirmative action, both
out of concern for future job-hiring practices and college admissions, ex-
pressions reflecting conservative political views expressed in the media,
and in their own community in terms of a discourse of white privilege
(Reisigl and Wodak, 2001).
In discussions of affirmation action, the students argued that because
they did not participate in past instances of racismas related, for exam-
ple, to the portrayal of slavery in Kindredthey should not face reverse
discrimination, which was evident for them, in affirmative-action pro-
grams. One student argued that accusations against the current white
population as responsible for past misdeeds was misplaced because we
had nothing to do with what our ancestors did, but we are still the ones
who have to face the consequences for it.
Noting that they needed to pay far more tuition to attend a competi-
tive college than did students of color, they were critical of government tu-
ition support programs and job-hiring policies. One student noted that if
you have a guy who goes in there, say a Native American person who is
just as qualified as the person if not better, they will always be judged as
better because of their color and because of their background than what a
white person would be because they are used to the white person.
A number of students argued that affirmative action programs actu-
ally created a disincentive for students to work hard in school because
they were given a free ride. As one student noted, Why do we have to
keep giving the black kids help because it is not encouraging them to do
something better . . . if you want somebody to be something better, you
shouldnt give them money just for being good.
In challenging students arguments related to affirmative action,
Parks examined race and class inequities in terms of larger systems, as op-
posed to framing issues in terms of their own personal gains or losses. For
example, one white student indicated that he was struggling with a jour-
nal prompt, what race/gender, etc. would make your life easiest? The
student noted, I have black people in my family. I dont want to say that
whites are better. Parks responded that its not who you think is better,
but in this system, this country, whose is easier? He consistently re-
sponded to students by distinguishing between individual experiences of
students and the perceived norms of societal behavior.
Parks also noted contradictions in students positions regarding affir-
mative action related to assumptions about a history of exclusion operating
in higher education. He created a hypothetical case of low-income families
receiving more financial aid, a direct reference to the advantages afforded
students in the course. He also supported those students who were resisting
the shared, majority consensus emerging in the classroom, for example, that
whites should not be held accountable for past historical events.
Rather than challenging students himself, he encouraged expression
by other white students regarding the hegemonic control of the white sys-
tem. As a result, some students began to shift their stances. One white
student noted how she changed her view on affirmative action programs,
which she initially resented, because she became increasingly aware of
how race and culture serves to disadvantage some groups because of
their race and their culture and how they grew up and all of the things
that they had to deal with that I wouldnt, being white. Another student
noted: I just thought just because you were a minority you could just get
along in life a little easier when it comes to school and stuff like that. Get
scholarships and all that other good stuff. And then when we got into it a
lot of it kind of changed my whole aspect on it like how look at that now.
The way earlier hurdles and that sort of thing and where you come from
and your family situation. So that changed me a lot.
Another student noted that she became more aware of the institu-
tional challenges facing students of color: Now, at the end of class, my
perspective of the whole issue has done a 180. Not like just one not two
not three, but like, hundreds of things in class, different subjects and top-
ics and even going to like the East Saint Louis thing about how certain
people . . . I mean, you dont even realize how poor and how bad some
people really have it.
By forging relationships with students and telling stories, Parks func-
tioned as what Beverly Tatum (1997) described as a progressive white
ally by emphasizing similarities between his experiences and those of his

students. Through the use of effective metaphors and modeling ap-
proaches for self-interrogation of identity, he equipped students with
the language and processes through which to articulate their alternative
perspectives on race and class. As a result, some of the students began to
perceive themselves as operating in a cultural and economic system per-
petuating white privilege.
Changes in Individual Students Perspectives

The degree to which students shifted their perspectives to adopt a more in-
stitutional perspective varied within the group. Many of the white males
demonstrated little change.
Corey
Corey, a popular, white, athlete at Johnson identifies strongly with his
working-class family background. Coreys father is a self-employed
construction worker who bids out for construction work with his
brother; his mother was not employed outside of the home. Corey will be
the first in his family to attend college.
In class discussions, interviews, and journal entries, its common to
hear Corey voicing his family beliefs, using them to anchor his opinions.
This reflects the strong socializing force of the family in shaping racial at-
titudes around the need for social conformity (Feagin, 2000)in this
case, family members who were uneasy about the increasing diversity of
the school.
Much of Coreys identity revolves around his active participation in
sports as a means of defining his status in school. His participation in
sports was linked to discourses of self-discipline and competition in the
school culture. As Corey noted: I mean theres discipline in football so
you learn that, but then Id say hockey theres a lot more discipline . . . if
you do something wrong youre gonna get punished for it. Even at
school, he [the coach] finds out about everything I mean. And then base-
ball, baseballs like, a more relaxing sport, more fun, I mean still, you still
gotta stay disciplined if you wanna play, you cant be going out, getting
in trouble. . . .
The emphasis on self-discipline reflects a larger discourse of individ-
ualismthat ones success in sports is a matter of ones individual ability
to maintain self-control both in school and outside of school. Because
Corey perceives everyone as having an equal chance at sports, he sees
sports as fair, depending on athletes willingness to train and work
hardthat their success is a function of their individual motivation.
Coreys discourse of individualism spills over to his strong belief in

meritocracythat anyone can succeed if they work hard enough and that
everyone is given an equal chance to work, a discourse that shaped his
perspective of affirmative action policies. He consistently argued that af-
firmation action policies discriminated against whites. He noted that
Asian students can come to the United States or be born here and get
schooling for half or less than half of what white people go to school
for. He perceived affirmative action as not only creating disadvantages
in hiring, but also in college scholarship support: White people get no
help at all because they think every white person is rich. Minorities get
enrichment programs to get help with their scholarships, when most
white people dont get help with any money for college.
His belief in the value of meritocracy and hard work is evident in his
response to the novel, Bastard Out of Carolina. He argues that Bones fu-
ture depends on her own self-initiativethat she herself is responsible for
her own fate. As Corey noted: I think she could if she stayed in school
and went to college after, just like anybody else could. But, I dont know,
the things that went on in her life might mess her up a little bit. She might
need counseling or something, but I still think that she could get probably
get through it. I just think that she has a chance like anybody else. Any-
body [emphasis in the original] can, if you do the right stuff and work
hard your whole life.
In discussing Daddy Glens problems, Corey suggested that because
Daddy Glen had not adhered to his familys expectations for him, he
should begin living the way he was brought up in a middle-class fam-
ily. I thought that Glen sort of started off backward from his family.
His family is rich, and he should have an easier life to start off with, but
he kind of failed at everything and started going down the tubes and
now hes got to rebuild his way back up. Like, you guys were saying, he
didnt follow in his familys footsteps; he kind of funneled down. Hes
got to just build up and work harder now to get back up to where his
family is . . . with expectations.
Coreys perspective on Daddy Glen reflected a lack of a discourse of
class. He assumed that losing ones middle-class status resulted in Glens
decline, failing to recognize the ways in which the white middle-class peo-
ple in the town actually discriminated against and stigmatized working-
class people.
Corey is highly critical of instances in which affirmative action pro-
grams reward people for their skin color or ethnic background, under-
cutting his notion of hard work. In a class discussion on affirmative
action, Corey says that he has heard the following about his chances of
becoming a police officer: I want to be a police officer, but supposedly
now a day it is not easy to be a cop if you are white. Now it is a lot eas-
ier to become a cop if you are a minority. If you are white and you are
better than the person next to you and he is black, the white person might
not get that job. Just because that person is a different color. It is also that
way for college, white people get no help at all because they think every
white person is rich. Minorities get enrichment programs to get help with
their scholarships, when most white people dont get help with any
money for college.
For Corey, both home and sports discourses are grounded in the be-
lief in individually doing right as opposed to doing wrong, and
working hard. Confronting issues such as racial and socioeconomic op-
pression and affirmative action created tensions for white male athletes
such as Corey, who are uncomfortable dealing with these tensions,
because it requires a renegotiation of familiar, stabilizing discourses.
It could be argued that these students immersion in a world of sports
functions as a codified, defined defense against the complexities and con-
tradictions of interrogating the system. In the first of the John Updike Rab-
bit series, Rabbit Run, the high school basketball star Rabbit Angstrom
thinks approvingly about the clearly delineated lines on the basketball
court and the smooth arc of the ball moving through the air, thoughts that
contrast with the messiness of his deteriorating world after high school. As
suggested by northeastern British adolescent males football fan club activ-
ities (Nayak, 2003), sports functions as a nostalgic substitute for workplace
bonding in what were, prior to the diminution of manufacturing jobs in the
New Economy, vibrant workplace contexts. These males obsessive view
of sports and the value of winning seems to serve as an avoidance mech-
anism to addressing complexities and contradictions associated with the
declining status of working-class people.
Devin
However, not all of the male athletes in the class shared Coreys perspec-
tive. Devin is also a working-class, white, male athlete, whose father
worked in the local post office and his mother is a daycare worker. Devin
noted that his father has been working in the post office for seventeen
years. He has a twenty-three-year-old boss who thinks he knows it all. Its
kind of tough on him because he works nights. He also notes that I
have to work for what I need and want. And so do my parents; were a
working family. I wont get a free ride, so to speak, to college; Ill have
to work for it.
In contrast to Coreys discourse of individualism, Devin voiced per-
spectives reflecting an awareness of institutional aspects of white privilege.
While he derived some of these perspectives from his participation in com-
munity and church organizations, he was also influenced by the course
discussions and readings on white privilege, as well as Parkss perspectives

as a working-class white adult whom he emulated.
In responding to Love Medicine, Devin posited that whites were re-
sponsible for Native Americans dire conditions, in their co-creation of a
reservation system and by imposing their beliefs onto Native Americans:
We just kind of came over with all of our oppressionistic views and
Catholicism and this is the way to be and this is the way you should be
and oh yeah, this land is good for cultivating so Ill tell you what; we
have guns and you have spears so we will kick you out of here and give
you a crappy little plot of land up north. And, well let you sit there for
a little while until we need more land, and then well take that from you.
Then you can live in a more confined area and well take some more and
then take some more. . . . It was their land in the first place. We had no
right to cheat them out of their own land.
In rereading McIntoshs (1997) essay on white privilege a second

time toward the end of the course, he noted that he was learning to rec-
ognize the institutional advantages associated with white privilege that
blind people of the need for affirmative action. He noted that There are
people in this world that will give a job because of race and not of skill.
We just dont see it because we have unearned advantages of being
White. We dont see that because we are brought up this waya process
of coming to see that some of the power which I originally saw as atten-
dant on being a human being in the U.S. consisted in unearned advantage
and conferred dominance. . . .
He continued, noting that many of his white peers do not see
whiteness as a racial identity because of the way we were brought up
and taught was all about the whites and how good we are. But notice
there isnt a whole lot on how poorly we treated others (people of minor-
ity). In a way we are dictators of other cultures. I say this because we
enslaved a race for almost 200 years because we were fat and lazy.
He perceived instances of racism in his everyday life: Even today as
I work at a gas station I see segregation. IDs will be checked on a black or
Hmong customer but not on a white. During World War II we had
Japanese prison camps for Japanese-Americans. So in reality, are we re-
ally all that great? I tend to think not. Our privilege system only seems to
benefit us.
In response to his peers valuing of individuals hard work as op-
posed to affirmative action hiring programs, he argued that such pro-
grams were needed given the institutional racism shaping hiring practices:
They said if you work hard for it, you get what you deserve, and thats
not necessarily true, because the racism in society is really strong when
you try to get a job.
He was one of the several students in the course who changed his at-
titude toward affirmative action due to his exposure to the historical im-
pact of institutional racism given the history of what we put all of them
through. About time we give something back to them.
In responding to the literary texts in the course, as well as Parkss per-
spectives, he experienced alternative discourses leading to his awareness of
institutional aspects of racism. While he was not entirely consistent in his
stance, and would occasionally voice more traditional discourses, in con-
trast to intransigent stances of the other white males in the course, he rep-
resented one of the students in the class who was willing to entertain new
ways of thinking about issues of race and white privilege.
Conclusion
These two students varied in the degree to which they addressed issues of
race and affirmative action. They differed in their willingness to engage
with the dialogic tensions operating in Parkss course. Corey, a working-
class white male, resisted these dialogic tensions as inconsistent with his
stance of a discourse of individualism and hard work consistent with
his identity as competitive male athlete. He voiced adopting a popular re-
sentment toward the presumed advantage of people of color in job hiring.
In contrast, Devin, also a working-class white male athlete, was more
open to entertaining notions of institutional racism.
The results of this study point to the value of encouraging alternative,
conflicting value stances in literature discussions as a means of challeng-
ing students status quo discourses. Students were experiencing the voices
of characters who challenge the status quo, as is the case in Butlers Kin-
dred and Allisons Bastard Out of Carolina, in which the main characters
adopt outsider, deviant perspectives on their worlds, and address dialogic
tensions related to race and class differences. Constructing these charac-
ters dialogic tensions transferred over to entertaining tensions in their
own lives, tensions attributed to difference in race and class (Beach,
Thein, and Parks, in press).
While the students had difficulty interrogating institutional dis-
courses of race and class, some students such as Devin began to recognize
that their worlds are mediated by discourses and by institutional forces.
These changes in value stances are unlikely to occur from solitary inter-
ventions: reading multicultural literature alone, or discussions with di-
verse peers, or challenges from a teacher or peer. But a combination of
all three may at least create possibilities that at least some of these work-
ing-class students, particularly white males, will resist the conservative
discourses that attempt to divert their attention from the economic insti-
tutional forces shaping their lives.
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7
SOCIAL CLASS AND AFRICAN-AMERICAN
PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT
Cheryl Fields-Smith
Parental involvement encompasses an array of home- and school-based

activities that research frequently associates with student achievement
(Epstein, 1995; Stein and Thorkildsen, 1999). In fact, a steady stream of
research has led to federal, state, and local mandates that often require
schools to include parental involvement in their programs. However, the
discourse on parental involvement tends to favor the perspectives of
white, middle-class parents (Gavin and Greenfield, 1998). Furthermore,
school norms sometimes marginalize the school-based involvement of
ethnic-minority and low-income parents (McGrath and Kuriloff, 1999).
In order to avoid the confounding effects of both race and class, re-
searchers frequently examine the effects of social class among white parents.
However, John Diamond and Kimberley Gomez (2004) observed, . . . few
studies have examined social class patterns within racial groups other than
Whites. This is exemplified by William Jeyness (2003) meta-analysis of
forty-six studies of ethnic-minority parental involvement and achievement
in which each article controlled for socioeconomic status or did not disag-
gregate findings by social class. Furthermore, the existing literature often
suggests that teachers and administrators frequently perceive low-income,
ethnic-minority parents as less actively involved in their childrens education
(Stein and Thorkildsen, 1999), or as not interested in their childrens edu-
cation (Smrekar and Cohen-Vogel, 2001; Trotman, 2001).
The purpose of this chapter is to examine the experiences of seven
African-American families of elementary school-aged children represent-
ing four categories of social class (working class, working middle class,
managerial middle class, and professional middle class). I will explore the
167
168 Cheryl Fields-Smith
complex and distinctive ways in which African-American families intersect

with schools as I also consider the extent to which black parents emulate
the parental involvement practices of white parents in order to support
their childrens education. Specifically, I will explore how the existing lit-
erature on social class and parental involvement helps to explain black
parental involvement, as I also investigate where black and white parents
of similar social class backgrounds diverge in their involvement with their
childrens education. Understanding social class differences in home-
school interactions addresses issues of teacher misperceptions as well as
informing teacher education programs. In addition, given the link between
parental involvement and student achievement, investigations of parental
involvement among African-American families may also provide insight
regarding achievement disparity between white and black students.
As a starting point, I will incorporate Joyce Epsteins (1995) topology
for parental involvement as a framework for my analysis. Epsteins topol-
ogy of parental involvement activities and her home-school partnership
model both serve as theoretical constructs in parental involvement litera-
ture. The topology classifies parental involvement into six broad cate-
gories: (1) parenting, which includes creating a home environment that
supports children as students; (2) communicating, which refers to all
forms of home to school and school to home communication; (3) volun-
teering at the school, which refers to school-based activities; (4) learning
at home, which refers to family involvement with specific academics at
home; (5) decision making, which refers to parents participation in
school planning, advisory councils, and other parent leadership roles;
and (6) collaboration with the community, which refers to activities that
identify and integrate community resources and services in ways that
strengthen school programs, student learning outcomes, and families. De-
velopment of these varying types of parental involvement is believed to
help schools develop a comprehensive parental involvement policy.
Epstein (1995) also developed a model of the ways in which home,
school, and community should function as a partnership. Her model sug-
gests that the types of involvement represent interactions between families,
schools, and communities that should function as a partnership to influ-
ence students success in school. In the model, home, school, and commu-
nity each represent separate, but overlapping influences on student success.
An underlying assumption of the model is that children will most likely
succeed when they feel cared for and when they are encouraged to do well.
The model posits that home, school, and community should all be respon-
sible for the appropriate interactions and connections required to foster
student success. Students are in the center of the spheres of influence be-
cause the partnerships themselves do not result in student success. Rather,
partnerships support and encourage students to create their own success.
Parental Involvement 169
While Epstein acknowledges that home-school-community partner-

ships will vary from one to another, she assumes that each component of the
partnership functions with a belief in shared responsibility between them. In
other words, the model suggests that the adults in the home, school, and
community form interdependent connections in relation to student success.
Epsteins (1995) model guides parental involvement research and policy.
Middle-class parents tend to be more engaged within each of these
forms of involvement than working-class parents. Several explanations
have been offered for social class differences in parental involvement
among white parents. For example, Lareau (2000) found that unlike their
middle-class counterparts, white, working-class parents have a tendency
to refrain from establishing working relationships with their childrens
teachers, which created a barrier to parents knowledge of school events
and classroom happenings. In addition, Thomas Gorman (1998) demon-
strated that some parents past negative experiences related to social class
led to a devaluation of the role of education among white, working-class
families. In fact, . . . parents who experienced hidden injuries of class
tended to harbor the most contempt for individuals with college degrees
and/or upper-level, white-collar occupations (p. 15).
In contrast, the research directed at African-American parental in-
volvement at the elementary school level tends to focus on families of low
social class. Studies have demonstrated that teachers can play a critical
role in contributing toward increasing the involvement of low-income par-
ents. For example, comparing teachers who were low and high encour-
agers of parental involvement, Karen Gavin and Daryl Greenfield (1998)
demonstrated that parents responses to teacher requests to be involved in-
creased when teachers in both categories of parental involvement encour-
agement made requests for specific forms of involvement activity, which
has been further supported by Kathryn Drummond and Deborah Stipek
(2004). In addition, Kimberley Waggoner and Alison Griffith (1998) indi-
cated that parents adopted some of the teachers behaviors and language
they observed while volunteering in their childrens classrooms.
However, African-American parental involvement research has also
identified differences between parent-teacher perspectives. For example,
Waggoner and Griffith (1998) demonstrated that black parents and teach-
ers are not always talking about the same thing when they speak of
parental involvement. They indicated that the African-American low-
income parents included both home- and school-based activities in their de-
finitions of parental involvement. Conversely, teachers defined parental in-
volvement narrowly, only based on school-assigned activities. In fact,
teacher comments included a remark of surprise when a black parent
appeared to take the initiative assuming a role that was not assigned
by the school. Similarly, James Bauman and Deborah Thomas (1997)
documented the motivations and practices of a highly involved, low-income

African-American single parent, who took the initiative to maintain com-
munication with the teacher regarding her childs progress in school, which
challenged the teachers preconceived negative perceptions of black single-
parents involvement in their childrens education. Claire Smrekar and Lora
Cohen-Vogel (2001) revealed acute contrasts between school staff members
negative beliefs regarding parents interests in their childrens education and
parents desire to not only be heard, but also to be valued as a parent. In
fact, parents repeatedly stated that they would become more involved, if
asked. In comparison, teachers and administrators in the school character-
ized the parents as lazy and disinterested in their childrens schooling. Stud-
ies that examine specific programs document successful strategies to involve
parents in the educational process of their children (Edwards, 1995; Morris,
1999). In many cases, these studies highlight the crucial role of schools ini-
tiating the interaction between home and school.
Yet, such initiation may not be the norm in schools in which teachers
may harbor doubts about the potential contributions of low-income par-
ents. In such schools, the staff may not recognize the social capital of
lower-social class parents or parents of color. Studies that employ social
capital theory have shown that school personnel favor parental behavior
that is deemed supportive of school policy and procedures, behaviors usu-
ally associated with middle-class, white parents (Gavin and Greenfield,
1998; Lareau and Horvat, 1999; McGrath and Kuriloff, 1999). Part of the
social capital that parents bring to schools originates in their social net-
works. Within their social networks, families have different access to in-
formation about schools and about children. White middle-class parents
are more likely than black working-class parents to have social networks
that consist of school staff and other parents in the school (Marshall et al.,
2001; McGrath and Kuriloff, 1999). Moreover, Steven Sheldon (2002) in-
dicated that the size and location of a parents social network predicted
their involvement. Parents interactions with adults in their childrens
school predicted involvement in school-based activities. Conversely, par-
ents interactions with adults outside of their childrens school predicted
home-based learning activities. In the absence of other outreach efforts
from schools, homogeneous social networks, such as those found among
working-class black families, were associated negatively with overall well-
being and student progress in school (Marshall et al., 2001).
Although evidence of social network commonalities exists among black
families, studies have also revealed considerable diversity among black par-
ents of similar class backgrounds. Diane Scott-Jones (1987) compared the
teaching styles of the low-income parents of high- and low-achieving chil-
dren and found that mothers of high-achieving children tended to approach
teaching their children at home naturally, incorporating it into the regular
routines of the home. In contrast, mothers of low-achieving students
approached learning at home more formally. Additional evidence of vari-

ance among low-income involvement was demonstrated by Scott-Joness
(1987) finding that high achievers parents tended to stress the importance
of good grades more often than parents of low-achieving children, who fre-
quently stressed good behavior. Similarly, Smrekar and Cohen-Vogel (2001)
found the low-income, ethnic-minority parents in their study were divided
between viewing the value of education as their childrens acquisition of
particular knowledge of a subject area or the childrens acquisition of social
skills. Moreover, Robert Colberts (1991) study of twenty-three African-
American parents with primarily limited levels of education revealed that
approximately half of the parents felt powerless in their interactions with
their childrens school and were characterized as nonassertive. The remain-
ing half of the participants reported frustration, but also utilized strategies
that characterized them as assertive and empowered in their ability to influ-
ence their childrens educational experience. The author noted that 80 per-
cent of the nonassertive parents reported an overall satisfaction with their
childrens progress in school, while 60 percent of the assertive parents ex-
pressed dissatisfaction, suggesting that parents passive involvement may be
associated with satisfaction in their childrens performance at school. Alter-
natively, the low-income, ethnic-minority parents interviewed by Smrekar
and Cohen-Vogel expressed deference toward their childrens teachers.
However, these parents did not report feelings of intimidation. Instead, like
the parents in Colbert (1991), they articulated frustration with their inter-
actions with school personnel.
The variations among African-American parents in these studies paral-
lel those found in the literature on white parents. For example, Drummond
and Stipek (2004) found that regardless of race/ethnicity, parents expressed
a belief in the importance of involvement in their childrens education,
a finding that has been supported by previous research (Chavkin and
Williams, 1993; Farkas et al., 1999; Stein and Thorkildsen, 1999). Racial/
ethnic congruence exists among some of the parental involvement literature
related to social class. For example, some groups of working-class parents
distinguished between parent and teacher responsibility in the educational
process, suggesting an independent relationship, and they limited their roles
to monitoring their childrens homework (Lareau, 2000). Another similar-
ity between African-American and white working-class families found in the
literature is that acceptable forms of involvement are often learned
through school norms (Lareau, 2000; McGrath and Kuriloff, 1999;
Smrekar and Cohen-Vogel, 2001). Combined, such research attest to the
existence of an institutionalized understanding of appropriate parental
involvement actions. Usually these actions include attending school meet-
ings, monitoring homework completion, and attending school programs.
In general, research on African-American parents of low socioeconomic
status establishes that for the most part, they not only value education, but
also desire to be involved in their childrens education. Yet, the question re-
mains as to what constitutes social class. M. Freeman (2004) posits that the
use of measures such as income or free/reduced lunch eligibility may cause
researchers to miss interpret the relationships and interactions that explain
differences in social class. Similarly, Michael Zweig (2004) and Stanley
Aronowitz (2003) suggest that social class should be understood as the de-
gree of power or autonomy participants have as a result of their jobs. De-
grees of power are observed in a persons ability to influence legislation and
policy, to hire and fire workers, and to control their work environments.
Zweig argues that defining social class in terms of power requires an exam-
ination of the relationships between social classes. In this chapter, I will em-
ploy power-based, rather than income-based definitions of social class in
order to contribute toward a better understanding of the mediation of
parental involvement among African-American families. As social classifi-
cations based on occupation are difficult in studies of parenting, where one
parent often works at home during childrens early years, I will follow
Zweigs (2000) suggestion that unemployed spouses usually, share the
class position of their working mate (p. 12). For this study, the social class
of stay-at-home mothers was based on the social class of their husbands.
In sum, the literature not only informed the definitions of social class
for this study, but also guided the research questions. School staffs tend
to expect and favor the involvement practices of white, middle-class par-
ents, which are often school-based. Working- and lower-class parents fre-
quently face barriers to participation in such forms of involvement.
However, working- and lower-class families often express a greater will-
ingness and desire to be involved in their childrens educational process
than is perceived by teachers and administrators.
Most of the research on parental involvement has examined white
families. In fact, . . . few studies have examined social class patterns
within racial groups other than whites (Diamond and Gomez, 2004,
p. 384). Therefore, we do not yet know the extent to which black parents
carve out distinctive forms of parental involvement or whether they cre-
ate distinctive ways of supporting their childrens education. This study
made the following inquiries: As their children attend schools in which
black students continue to lag behind white peers, when do black parents
create distinctive forms of parental involvement to support the specific
challenges face by their children, and when do they adapt the forms of
parental involvement of white parents, practices that schools most read-
ily expect and recognize as supportive of childrens achievement?
Methodology
This chapter utilizes data from a larger study (Fields-Smith, 2004) that
investigated the parental involvement attitudes, beliefs, practices, and
explanations of 19 African-American parents (14 mothers and 5 fathers)

across levels of social class within the same southeastern school district.
Each parent represented a different family. Originally, participants were
selected through a community nomination process as described by
Michelle Foster (1997). Three African-American parents representing
three different schools were asked to nominate additional parents as po-
tential participants. The final sample of parents ranged in age from 34 to
51 years. The average age of the group was 45 years old and their chil-
dren ranged in grades from kindergarten to the fifth grade.
Interviews with seven parents from this original sample were used to
examine differences in parental involvement among various levels of so-
cial class. Unlike previous studies on parental involvement, this study em-
ploys defines social class based on parents occupational autonomy as
described by Zweig (2004). Using this framework changed low-income,
middle-income, and upper-income classifications to working class, work-
ing middle class, managerial middle class, and professional middle class.
Working-class professions represented included a nursing aid and retail
worker. Working middle-class families included essentially blue-collar
workers who have acquired middle-class status through home ownership.
Managerial middle-class occupations represented include business execu-
tives who have the authority to hire and fire employees; however, they
lack the social and political influence afforded to the upper echelons of
corporate America. Husbands who held managerial middle-class posi-
tions had greater flexibility in their work schedules than working-class
families. In addition, managerial middle-class fathers had wives who
stayed at home, worked part-time, or were retired. Occupations repre-
sented in the professional middle class include lawyers and a psychiatrist.
None of the parents in this study represented families in poverty.
The seven parents selected from the original sample of 19 partici-
pants were chosen with the intention of providing a cross section of so-
cioeconomic status levels found in the original study. In addition, the
selected parents represent different types of school settings including a
predominantly white magnet school (PWT), a predominantly black
theme school (PBT), and two predominantly black traditional elementary
schools (PBE1 and PBE2). Given the use of a community nomination
process to identify participants, these seven parents represent highly in-
volved families. In fact, all of the parents were members of the PTA exec-
utive board committee except for one. Four of the seven parents had
previously, or were currently serving as, PTA president. Unfortunately,
this study does not capture the experiences of parents who were less visi-
ble in their childrens schools. Rather, the parents of this study represent
the fairly typical parental leaders from this community. Table 1 provides
a summary of background and demographic data for the seven parents
represented in this chapter.
Table 1
Summary of Parent Background and Demographic Data
Parent and Number of Native

School Marital Children Social Community
Pseudonym Age Status (Grades) Class Occupation Type Education
Betty 37 S 2 Working Retail Urban Some
(PBE1) (5th, college) Employee (Northeast) College
Val 39 S 2 Working Nurses Urban Some
(PBE1) (1st, 4th) Aide (North) College
Vicki 39 M 2 Working- Admin. (Military) BA
(PBT) (5th, 7th) Middle Asst.
Edward 50 M 3 Professional- Lawyer Urban Advanced
(PBE2) (4th, 2 adult) Middle (Southeast) Degree
Robert 51 M 3 Managerial- I. T. Suburban Advanced
(PBE2) (K, 2nd, 4th) Middle Manager (Southeast) Degree
Barbara 46 M 2 Managerial- Stay-At- Suburban BA
(PWM) (5th, 7th) Middle Home Mom (Midwest)
Mary 51 M 2 Professional- Retired Urban Advanced
(PWM) (2nd, 6th) Middle Teacher (Northeast) Degree
Research Setting
All of the parents who participated in this study had at least one child at-
tending a public elementary school in Howard County Public Schools (pseu-
donym). Located in the southeastern region of the United States, the school
district has experienced a 10% growth rate over the past ten years. Further-
more, census data revealed that the racial composition of the county has
changed from majority white (71.3%) in 1980, to majority black (55.3%)
in 2000. The percentages of Asian and Hispanic-Americans who attend
schools in the county more than doubled in the same time period as well.
The increase in Howard Countys population led to an increased en-
rollment of students in the countys public school system. The districts stu-
dent enrollment increased from 90,837 in the year 2000, to 97,284 in 2003,
according to reports presented on the State Department of Education Web-
site. In 2003, 74,739 students of the total 97,284 identified themselves as
African-American. Of these, 41,859 students attended elementary schools in
the county, grades pre-Ksixth. In comparison, 10,372 Howard County
school students identified themselves as white, and 6,097 of these attended
elementary schools in the county.
Together, the seven parents represented four schools in the same south-
eastern district. These included two predominantly black, traditional ele-
mentary schools (PBE1 and PBE2), one predominantly black theme school
(PBT), and one predominantly white magnet school (PWM). Table 2 pro-
vides a summary of the demographic and achievement data available for
each school, as of 2003.
From table 2, it is evident that school PWM, the predominantly white
magnet school, has the highest achievement levels and the lowest percentage
of students eligible for free/reduced lunch of the four schools. School PBT,
the predominantly black theme school, has the largest student population
and the second best achievement levels and second lowest percentage eligi-
ble free/reduced lunch. Although the two predominantly black elementary
schools have relatively similar-size student populations and achievement lev-
els, the percentage of students eligible for free/reduced lunch was 75% at
school PBE1 and 50% at school PBE2, respectively. In addition, schools
PBT and PWM tend to require yearly lotteries to determine the placement of
new students due to an access of applications from families attempting to
have their children enrolled. Although the Howard County School District
was majority black, the predominantly white magnet school (PWM) was
centrally located in majority white neighborhoods. In contrast, the predom-
inantly black schools (schools PBE1, PBE2, and PBT) were located in ma-
jority black neighborhoods. As described by Drummond and Stipek (2004),
the location of school PWM most likely impedes the enrollment of African-
American and other ethnic-minoritystudents. Barbara and Mary felt their
Table 2
Summary of School Demographic and Achievement Data for __________
Student Reading
Total Free/Reduced
Performance
School Enrolled Black White Hispanic Lunch Standards
PBE1 798 660 30 32 600 (75%) Not Met: 20%
Met: 49%
Exceeded: 32%
PBE2 758 735 3 5 445 (50%) Not Met: 14%
Met: 50%
Exceeded: 36%
PBT 1,090 1,060 3 6 495 (45%) Not Met: 5%
Met: 37%
Exceeded: 59%
PWM 414 125 236 2 40 (10%) Not Met: 0
Met: 6%
Exceeded: 94%
children would receive a better quality of education at school PWM than

at their assigned neighborhood schools. They based their decisions to en-
roll their children in school PWM on the schools high test scores and
reputation of excellence.
Research Design
This qualitative study utilized a modified version of Irving Seidmans
(1998) multistage interview design. Data were collected from two inter-
views with each parent. This first stage of interviews was conducted early
in the school year and focused on both background and current practices
at home and at school. These initial interviews averaged one hour and fif-
teen minutes in length. The second stage of interviews queried parents
motivations to be involved in their childrens education. These follow-up
interviews occurred approximately six months after the first interviews
and averaged forty-five minutes. Interviews were recorded and tran-
scribed. Transcripts were reviewed by each participant for accuracy.
Analysis of data consisted of a process of coding patterns and identifying
themes (Creswell, 1998).
Findings
The results of this study will be presented in the four categories of social
classes (working class, working middle class, managerial middle class,
and professional middle class). Profiles of parents will be presented
within each level of social class. Next, patterns and themes will be dis-
cussed within each of the four levels of social class. Finally, the report of
findings will conclude with a discussion of patterns and themes identified
across class levels.
Working Class
Describing the working class, Zweig (2000) writes, On the job, most
workers have little control over the pace and content of their work. . . .
The job may be skilled or unskilled, white collar or blue collar (p. 13) Ac-
cordingly, two parents in this study represent working class families. First,
Betty, who works as a retail employee and who is the mother of two boys,
one in the fifth grade and the other attending a local community college.
Next, Val, who works as a nursing aide and who is also the mother of two
boys, both in elementary school (first and fourth grades). Both Betty and
Val were divorced and basically raising their children on their own. Nei-
ther Betty nor Val was a native of the southeastern region where they were
currently raising their children. There were from the northeast and north-
ern regions, respectfully. Both womens children attended school PBE1. As
may be expected Betty and Val share similar parental involvement beliefs,
practices, and motivations; however, they also reported several key differ-
ences in their interactions between home and school.
BETTY: As a retail employee, Betty reported that she had little control
over her work schedule to the extent that she frequently had to work twelve
hours a day. However, she tended to have one day per week off, which she
sometimes used to visit the school. Betty reported that she visited the school
two to three times per month to volunteer, meet with the teachers, or make
a surprise visit. Bettys volunteering was limited to single-event activities be-
cause of the irregularity of her availability. Her volunteer activities include
working with small groups of children, chaperoning field trips, providing
baked goods, and helping teachers. Betty expressed the fact that her sched-
ule keeps her from being a PTA mom. She attends meetings when possi-
ble because she believes PTA meetings tell her . . . whats going on with
education at the state and the quality of education that her children re-
ceived and she reported that so far, she was satisfied. Betty takes the initia-
tive to demonstrate her desire to be involved in her sons education. She
stated, When I have the chance to be at the school, Ill call the teacher to
try to make arrangements prior to the day to see if we can sit down and talk
about where my son is in school so that the teacher and I can feel comfort-
able. Im letting the teacher know that Im involved with my child and that
I want to be involved.
This statement demonstrates Bettys awareness of, and desires to,
comply with school expectations of parental involvement.
Bettys school visits served several additional purposes. First, she ex-
plained, I meet his teachers and establish a relationship with them.
Bettys relationships with teachers primarily serve to keep informed of
her childrens progress in school. Second, she reported, When Im at the
school I work with the teacher in class to make my son see Mom is there.
I also get to meet his peers and it just does something. Betty also admit-
ted that she conducted surprise visits to the school, . . . just to let my son
know I could appear at anytime.
Betty also conducted home-based activities including reading with
her son at home, practicing math skills, reviewing spelling word lists, and
checking his homework. In particular, Betty gave an account that demon-
strated her knowledge of the importance of her son hearing himself as he
read, and therefore, requiring him to read aloud.
When asked how she knew to use these types of learning strategies,
Betty first reflected on experiences of her own mother reading with her at
home. Then she commented, I dont have a degree, but some of my
friends are more educated than yourself, so thats the good thing about
having friends and networking so that you can call them and ask them
and they give you advice. So thats a good thing that has helped me.
Some of these relationships had been established over time from high
school, within her sons school, and from previous work experiences. For
example, a friend, who was a school secretary, told her about a magnet
middle school program that she will apply for when her son is old enough
to attend. She also received strategies from suggestions made by teachers
in the school reminiscent of the parent described in the Bauman and
Thomas (1997) case study. Bettys social network also included neighbors
who served as a safety net on occasions when she was not able to be
home at night due to work.
Bettys motivations to be involved in her sons education extended
beyond a general belief in the value of parental involvement. First, her
own experiences served as the primary factor motivating her home- and
school-based involvement activities. She confided that she did not finish
high school because she was pregnant with her first child. Although she
did return to school, Betty stated, . . . once I started having children,
then they became my main focus. So with my own children, I want them
to fulfill their education. Thats what drives me in the inside because I
know what I sacrificed. Second, she admitted that teachers themselves
inspired her to be involved. She expressed empathy for teachers through
comments such as, Teachers are very important people and a lot of
times they dont get what they deserve. Reviewing her own experiences,
Betty stated that she could not think of one negative experience with her
teachers. Similarly, Gorman (1998) found that working-class parents
with positive learning experiences in childhood were more likely to value
education than working-class parents with negative experiences. Bettys
belief in the importance of education and the need for education in soci-
ety also motivated her involvement. She stated,
It [education] is one of the keys of life that youve got to have if you want
to be successful and be on the ball. You have to stimulate your brain and
want to read and write. . . . Education is why we have doctors and
lawyers and all of these different things. If you want to be one of them,
youre going to have to go for the degree. If you just want to become part
of the American workforce, you can do that too, but still youre going to
have to read, write, add, and subtract. . . . So, no matter where you are in
your life, no matter what level of workability you want to do, or educa-
tion, youre still going to have to have basic fundamentals.
These comments demonstrate Bettys awareness of the possibilities

related to education and indicate that she believes education to be a uni-
versal need regardless of ones social position.
Betty continues, Not only do you want the basics, you want the
best. You want to go up there and get your Masters. You want to get
your BA. Thats what I tell my son because like my mother sacrificed a lot
for me and I end up sacrificing a lot for them. So I push my children like
my mother pushed me because you always want better for your children,
so you push them.
She has succeeded with one son who was already enrolled in college.
However, while her comments may be inspiring and demonstrate an
awareness of the possibilities of mobility with education, the remarks do
not necessarily reflect an understanding of the limitations (e.g., social and
economic) related to obtaining advanced degrees.
Overall, Bettys school- and home-based activities reflect her support
of the educational process. She monitored her childrens progress in
school through school visits and through learning activities at home. The
demands of her job led to sporadic school visits, but she still strived to
maintain a connection with her sons teachers as part of monitoring his
progress in school. Bettys heterogeneous social networks provided sup-
port and knowledge that enhanced her sons educational experience.
However, very few of these contacts were within her sons school. Unlike
the working-class parents described by Drummond and Stipek (2004),
Betty expressed an overall satisfaction with her sons elementary school.
VAL: Vals two sons attended school PBE1 along with Bettys chil-
dren; one was in the fourth grade and the other was in the first grade. Val
also has a two-year-old daughter who attended a day care facility during
the day.
Although Vals work as a nurses aide provided limited financial re-
sources and societal influence, her position fostered steady work hours,
which made attending evening meetings more feasible than visiting the
school during the day. Therefore, unlike Betty, Val was able to serve as
an active member of the PTA. In fact, Val served as a chair of the Cul-
tural Arts Committee of the PTA and reported that her goal was to have
the group . . . connect a little more with the teachers to make sure that
its [Cultural Arts programs] in conjunction with what we are doing.
This comment reflected parental involvement with a broader, school-
wide focus than Bettys. In fact, prompting was required to solicit Vals
reflections on her parental involvement activities directed toward her
own children.
Similar to Betty, the home- and school-based activities that Val en-
gaged in for her children represented primarily monitoring, supporting,
and reinforcing the educational process at the school. Val reported that
she used the school agenda planner system at home and the school-wide,
weekly notices to assist with the monitoring of her childrens progress.
Agenda planners required teachers and parents to initial their childrens

homework assignments daily. This communication enable Val to review
her childrens homework and to make sure that it was placed in her chil-
drens backpacks for the next day. Moreover, Val served as one of the
room parents for her sons class. This position kept her in contact with
other parents, with classroom happenings, and with the teacher.
Unlike Betty, Val reported having numerous connections with other
parents and teachers in the school that extended well beyond her neigh-
borhood. Val became involved with the PTA executive board after she at-
tended a general PTA meeting and heard the PTA president requesting
more parents to become involved in PTA leadership roles. Since that
meeting two years ago, Val and the current PTA president became
friends. This is the second year that Val has served on the Cultural Arts
Committee. As chair of the committee, most of Vals duties can be com-
pleted in the evening (e.g., making phone calls and attending meetings).
She also reported that her PTA committee work fostered a working rela-
tionship with the schools principal. While this relationship did not ex-
tend beyond the school, Val was able to develop a rapport such that she
felt comfortable bringing issues to the principal.
This also contributed to her broad parental involvement perspective.
She confided, I have seen teachers hollering just at the brink, to me, of a
nervous breakdown. But luckily, a lot of the things that Ive seen havent
been in my childrens classrooms. But, I did voice what I had observed to
some other teachers and I didnt mention any names to the principal, but
you want to know whats going on in there [the school]. You want to
make sure nobodys hollering at your kid, unjustly at least. Although
Val was a highly involved parent, she felt her job kept her from serving as
a watchdog on the behalf of the children during the school day. She ex-
plained, I see grandparents and parents in the school all the time. I know
theyre not on the payroll, but theyre helping as monitors and stuff. Id
like to be able to do that a little more too.
Val believed that it is every parents responsibility to be involved in
their childrens education. She resented the seemingly complacent parents
who do not show up even when the school scheduled important work-
shops or meetings on Saturdays. She lamented, If I as a single parent can
do it, then every parent should be able to do it. She further revealed,
Even though I cant be in the building on a regular basis, I can make
phone calls for teachers, help coordinate field trips, and prepare items for
a bulletin board. Val made a point to visit the school at least once or
twice per week by dropping her children off to school in the morning. She
used this time to informally maintain communication with staff members.
Val ascribed to a by any means necessary approach to being involved
in her childrens education.
Similar to Betty, Vals at-home practices centered on reinforcing

skills and concepts learned at school and monitoring homework and
overall academic performance. Both parents valued the importance of
getting to know their childrens teachers and providing service to the
classroom. However, Vals social network, primarily located with the
school, enable her to have a broader perspective of parental involvement.
Her PTA committee work fostered her ability to internalize and to work
to implement part of the mission of the school. She was also able to in-
fluence school curriculum through the Cultural Arts Committee.
Discussion
As single, working-class mothers, Betty and Val faced work-related con-
straints on their parental involvement. The irregularity of Bettys work
schedule challenged the consistency of her involvement and Vals day-
time, inflexible schedule limited her ability to visit the school during the
school day. However, for both mothers, the belief in the importance of
education and contacts within their social networks influenced them to
develop strategies to circumnavigate these barriers.
In fact, together, Betty and Val exhibit all six of the forms of in-
volvement found on Epsteins (1995) topology of parental involvement
activity. First, Betty and Vals parenting activities included close moni-
toring of their childrens progress and providing routines that support
learning. Second, communication occurred through informal visits,
arranged meetings, and the school-initiated mediums of an agenda plan-
ner and weekly mailers. Next, both working-class parents engaged in vol-
unteering at the school. Their volunteering activities tended to be single
events such as chaperoning field trips, rather than ongoing tutoring.
However, Val was able to serve as a room parent for her sons classroom.
She found that she could conduct several activities on the teachers behalf
at home. In addition, the teacher had more than one room parent as-
signed, which made the job easier for Val because tasks could be shared.
Fourth, Betty and Val conducted learning activities at home. How-
ever, each of the mothers tended to support and reinforce learning at
home similar to the working-class parents described in Waggoner and
Griffith (1998) who incorporated teacher behaviors they observed while
volunteering with interactions with their children at home.
Only Val displayed practices in the final two classifications of Epsteins
(1995) typology, decision making, and collaboration with the community.
Through her work as PTA Cultural Arts Committee chair, Val researched
and coordinated artistic school performances from groups locally and out-
side of the district. This position gave her a deeper understanding of the
school curriculum as she sought to make connections between the scheduled
performances and curricula at various grade levels. Similarly, her PTA com-
mittee role enabled her to collaborate with various community resources to
enhance learning for all of the children in the school. From observations of
several PTA executive board meetings, I observed that the committee re-
ceived direction from the school principal in identifying community re-
sources. The principal also encouraged the committee to work with teachers
at each grade level in order to connect the cultural performances and pro-
grams to the curriculum.
Epsteins (1995) topology in of itself might not capture fully the roles
of parental involvement displayed by these parents. For example, the
advocacy displayed by Val through her watchdog-like monitoring of
teacher-child interaction as she visited the school may have been catego-
rized as communication or volunteering. However, Vals sense of agency
represented a stark contrast with typical everyday communicating or vol-
unteering. In addition, Betty frequently initiated contacts with her chil-
drens teachers. Rather than wait for scheduled conferences, she called to
arrange a meeting with the teacher when she had the time.
Concurrent with previous studies, the school played an important
role in fostering these parents involvement. Universal use of agenda plan-
ners and weekly school mailers provided Betty and Val with a medium
through which they could not only communicate with teachers on a reg-
ular basis, but could also monitor their childrens progress as well. In ad-
dition, the principal played an important role in guiding parents to
connect programs to the curriculum. Moreover, teachers were open-
minded toward flexibility in activities that parents engaged in to support
the classroom.
Betty and Val differed from the working-class parents described by
Drummond and Stipek (2004) in that they were not trying to make
changes. In fact, Betty and Val appeared relatively content with their chil-
drens school and with their teachers, which was an attitude character-
ized by middle-class parents in Drummond and Stipek (2004). The
working-class mothers also differ from the parents described in Colbert
(1991), whose passive involvement reflected a general satisfaction with
their childrens progress in school. Although Betty and Vals children
were performing fairly well in school (receiving As, Bs, and one or two
Cs), both parents maintained active involvement within the boundaries
of their work situations and refrained from criticizing the school.
Working Middle-Class Parental Involvement

VICKI: As the daughter of a military family, Vicki grew up on both the East
and West coasts. She also spent several years overseas. Her military child-
hood provided fully integrated schooling on military bases. Vicki recalled a
sense of comfort in her mother being home when she arrived from school
each day. At age thirty-nine, Vicki was the mother of two children, a fifth-
grade girl and a seventh-grade son, and she strived to provide that same
comfort for them as well.
After the birth of her first child, Vicki left her full-time administrative
assistant position to become a part-time clerical worker at her church.
She and her husband, a heating and air conditioning repairman, decided
that it would be best for her to stay home with the children. In order to
ease the loss of Vickis full-time salary, her husband takes on additional
jobs on the side. Her husbands long work hours made Vicki the primary
parent who engaged in home- and school-based activities. She reported,
We were blessed that we could manage it, but it was a sacrifice. Twelve
years later, Vickis account demonstrates the advantages afforded them as
a result of the sacrifice of her salary.
As a part-time employee, Vicki was afforded more time to be in-
volved at her childrens school. She invested her time by serving on sev-
eral PTA committees, assuming PTA officer roles including president,
volunteering in her childrens classrooms, and supporting her childrens
extracurricular activities. While volunteering in school, Vicki engaged in
a variety of activities. She worked with remedial children in small groups,
assisted teachers with copying and correcting papers, and worked with
other teachers in the school as well.
Like Val, Vicki approached parental involvement with a broad per-
spective and a strong sense of collective agency. Rather than taking an
individualistic stance regarding the motivation and purpose of their in-
volvement, Vicki and Val expressed beliefs and participating in ways that
benefited children other than their own.
Vickis children attended school PBT, a predominantly black theme
school. Although the school is public, as a theme school administrators
were able to be innovative with the learning process and instruction. The
school also aimed to attract students beyond the typical neighborhood at-
tendance boundaries. Vickis children began attending school PBT prior to
it becoming a theme school. Because the family resided within the atten-
dance area for the school, the children were able to continue attending after
it became a theme school. Vicki reports, I was there before the theme
school. You know, the theme school concept is around parental involve-
ment. Thats its strength. The theme school requires sixteen hours of
parental involvement per year, per family. Prior to the school becoming a
theme school, Vicki was . . . a parent going on the field trips, coming in to
the classroom as the teacher requested it and needed help and whatnot.
Whereas with [school PBT], you know they have a whole list of things that
they assign you to do. Involvement is expected. Teachers expect you to be
there and they expect you to volunteer. If you didnt, then that would then
jeopardize your childs place at [school PBT]. These comments suggest

that when the school was a traditional elementary school, parental in-
volvement was based on teacher needs. Converting the school into a theme
school appeared to create additional opportunities for involvement. In fact,
the theme school created a parent center where . . . parents complete work
orders that teachers have placed. So, for example, they might make copies
or maybe make teaching tools. It really helps because not every parent is
comfortable working side by side with teachers.
Vicki believes wholeheartedly that involvement in her childrens edu-
cational process is part of the responsibility of raising children. She re-
flected, As a parent you have to be there for them [children] and you
have to nurture. You have to be there every step of the way in the devel-
opment, both physical, mental, emotional development. It comes from
being involved in what they do. You have to know who their friends are.
You have to know where they are in school. You have to know who is
teaching your child. What are the instilling? Because teachers have your
children for a good part of the day, the majority of the day and this is a
major influence on your child.
Contrary to parental involvement trends (Stein and Thorkildsen,
1999), Vicki believed that parents should get more involved as children
get older. In elementary school you feel like you just really have to be
there. I mean, youre more inclined to help the little one, so to speak.
Then as they get more independent, as they go one to middle school and
higher, you feel like you dont need to be there, but actually, its just the
opposite. They need you just as much. Part of the reason why Vicki felt
compelled to be involved even in the higher levels was due to her percep-
tion that she needed to maintain a relationship with her childrens teach-
ers to make sure that her children get the best education possible. She
linked her being at the school to the proverbial squeaky wheel that gets
the oil. She said, Every once in awhile you have that exceptional teacher
that goes beyond the call, with the majority of the students and making
sure that each and every one of their students is on track and thats a
good year, but they are rare. Another reason why Vicki became so ac-
tive in her childrens schooling is to foster relationships with teachers that
would enable her to monitor her childrens progress and to build a foun-
dation on which to rely during times when they would have to advocate
on her childrens behalf.
Vicki spent so much time at her childrens school that when asked
about the forms of home-school communication she used she replied,
Well, generally I would be there. So, it would be more face-to-face. If I
needed to call I would. But, generally, Id see them pretty much daily and
wed talk. Also, Ive been fortunate that my childrens teachers felt that
they could call me if they needed to contact me.
Similar to Val, Vicki described heterogeneous contacts in her social

networks. She reported that she developed friendships with her childrens
teachers which, at times, extended outside of the school. In addition, she
often became friends with the parents of her childrens friends. She com-
mented, When your children become really good friends and you know,
theyre outside of the classroom, you have that socialization and social-
ization activities. Relationships also naturally developed due to her chil-
drens extracurricular activities such as soccer. Vicki served as team mom
for her childrens soccer teams and met a number of parents in her chil-
drens schools as well as in surrounding schools. Church attendance was
another avenue for building relationships with parents and teachers.
Vicki attended a church centrally located in her community. Members of
the church had children, or taught in schools other than school PBT.
Vickis report of home-based activities was reminiscent of Betty and
Vals practices. The big thing is giving them the amount of space and
time to do homework and making sure that they had proper resources. It
used to be that you would have to take them to the library for projects,
but now because of the Internet . . . Well, we had to invest in a computer.
It has because mandatory. Teachers tell them to type up their assign-
ments. Like Betty and Val, Vickis home-based learning activities repre-
sented their support and reinforcement of learning in school.
Overall, Vickis home- and school-based practices represented all six
of Epsteins (1995) topology of parental involvement. Like Val, decision
making and collaborating with the community was mediated through
participation on the PTA executive board. Unlike Val, Vicki discussed
parental involvement issues beyond the school to the entire school dis-
trict. At one time, she chaired the Legislative Committee of the PTA
board and became more aware of political and legal issues facing schools
at the state and district level. Her awareness of educational issues beyond
school PBT was also fostered by the heterogeneous social network of
friends and acquaintances.
Managerial Middle Class

ROBERT: The father of three girls, Robert is the manager of an informa-
tion technology department of a major corporation. He works the grave-
yard shift, 11:00 pm7:00 am. His wife is a nurse supervisor. Roberts
three daughters attend a predominantly black traditional elementary
school (school PBE2). At fifty-one years of age, Robert is one of the old-
est parents interviewed. He experienced both segregated and desegre-
gated schooling. In fact, he was among the first integrated classes in his
mid-Atlantic school district.
Although Roberts parents did not graduate from high school, they
stressed the value of education as he grew up. Robert describes his child-
hood community as close-knit. He recounted, If you acted up in
school and your neighbors found out, they would tell on you.
Additionally, he described close relationships between his parents
and his teachers, who also lived in the community. Roberts descriptions
of his childhood community align with the documented histories of
bonded communities and African-American teachers of excellence during
segregated times (Foster, 1997; Walker, 1996) Robert also described his
childhood community as, lower middle class, meaning that his neigh-
borhood was not in the projects, but they also were not in the plush sub-
urb communities. This slight edge afforded him a college education and
contributed to his self-efficacy with regards to his own childrens rights to
a good education.
Roberts positive childhood experiences led him to seek a close-knit
community where his children could attend school, even though he had
to go outside of his assigned school to find it. After his children attended
three different schools, he used acquaintances and friends from work and
church to find a predominantly black, traditional elementary school
whose faculty and staff he described as . . . deeply devoted to our chil-
dren, sensational, and caring.
Robert and his wife were actively involved in their childrens education.
They both head a PTA committee for special needs children as one of their
children was a special needs child. In this role, they worked closely with the
principal to reduce the amount of time exceptional children spend receiving
services outside of the classroom. Robert also served on the school council,
which addresses school issues primarily at the district level. In addition, he
reported that he and his wife participate by tutoring children weekly during
and after school, volunteering on special event days, and by remaining avail-
able as needed throughout the school year. He and his wife divide parental
involvement duties between them in order to maintain a daily presence at
the school. Because Robert works at night, he visited the school most morn-
ings. His wife tended to participate in school activities held in the after-
noons, with the exception of tutoring days.
Given the inflection in his voice, tone of the interview, and amount of
data collected as Robert described his beliefs regarding parental involve-
ment, he was most passionate about the responsibilities parents have before
children enter school and their responsibility to build relationships with
their childrens teachers. For example, he stated, The first major role oc-
curs before children even get to school. Parents have to teach their children
that school is not playtime. School is not day care. School is for learning.
You cant learn when your mouth is running. He further emphasized that
parents responsibilities included preparing their children for school. For

Robert, preparing his children for school included making sure they get
enough sleep each evening, ensuring that they maintain personal hygiene,
fostering their independence, and instilling in them the importance of edu-
cation. These beliefs mimicked the remarks of Val and Betty as well.
Robert also voiced a strong belief that parents should be visible in
their childrens schools. Its only natural that a teacher responds to your
child when she sees how you respond to your child. If youre up at the
school, around your child, then that gives teachers a little faith. Its
human nature. They see me, they know thats a child that theyre going to
make sure that theyre going to achieve or theyre going to make sure that
they get the best out of them. And theyre also going to keep me informed
if my children are not giving their best.
Roberts comments demonstrate a belief in the advantages to be
gained through parents active visibility in their childrens schools. His ap-
proach to parental involvement included a strong sense of agency similar
to Val and Vicki. During the interviews, he often referred to the children
he worked with as his own, illuminating his sense of shared responsibility
and advocacy with children other than his own. Robert reported that he
used school events to speak to parents of the students he worked with re-
garding the students progress or behavior in school, both positively and
negatively. His motivations to share with other parents mirrored the con-
cept of the West African proverb, It takes a village to raise a child.
Again showing his ownership of agency for all children, he stated, If we
dont get the children to understand the boundaries of elementary school,
then its harder to get them to understand in middle school and its futile
in high school. Its the theory of growing a tree. They put a stick beside
it to make sure it grows straight. If you dont put a stick beside it, the
trunk will be all bent and youll never get it straight again. It is the same
with children.
Robert and Vickis belief in shared responsibility for the betterment
of schooling experiences for all children contrasts with the descriptions of
white, middle-class parents who, at times band together in the interests of
their own children only (McGrath and Kuriloff, 1999). Robert further ev-
idenced a belief in his responsibility to other children in the school as part
of his religious beliefs as well. God put parents as stewards over the chil-
dren. Robert acknowledged that he had advantages as an older parent.
The parents of the children who he volunteers with at school tended to be
younger than him; as a result they respected him.
Roberts maturity contributed to his social capital as well. He and his
wife decided to wait before having children. This wait time enabled the
couple to establish their careers, which provided each of them with the
flexibility needed to volunteer in their childrens schools regularly. Unlike
Betty and Val, Robert and his wife held professional positions with con-
siderable seniority. In addition, as salaried employees, Robert and his
wife were not faced with the consequence of sacrificed income as Betty
and Val experienced when they volunteered at the school.
Similar to Vicki, Roberts sweeping social network including neigh-
bors, teachers, professional colleagues, and politicians. While Betty and
Val emphasized social networks as a safety net for child care and for-
gotten homework, Roberts description of social networks included ac-
counts of advocacy and sharing strategies to improve the quality of
educational experiences for his children as well as for other children. For
example, Robert used his political connections to resolve an overcrowding
issue on his childrens school buses. The political acquaintance (whom he
met at a community meeting) advised him to rally parents to sign a peti-
tion to seek resolution and also guided him as to where to send the peti-
tion. In another instance, Robert, along with other parental colleagues,
worked together to petition the school board for flashing lights to be
placed at the entrance of the school as a safety measure. Moreover, Robert
relied on teacher contacts to develop an after school tutoring program.
Robert and his wife conducted learning activities at home just as
Betty, Val, and Vicki did. Robert reported that his wife assumed the re-
sponsibility of overseeing homework primarily because he sleeps during
the day since he works the night shift. However, unlike Betty, Val, and
Vicki, Robert conveyed that they also expanded the school curriculum by
teaching their children black history. The family visited museums, histor-
ical sites, and cultural events that help their children develop an under-
standing of who they were as African-Americans and also to develop an
awareness of the world around them.
In general, Roberts report revealed participation in each of the six
forms of parental involvement found in Epsteins (1995) topology.
Through his social networks, PTA involvement, and school council work,
he engaged in school decision making and collaborated with the commu-
nity to employ resources to improve the educational experience. He vol-
unteered and communicated with teachers on a regular basis, almost
daily. Unlike the previous parents, Roberts self-reported home-based in-
volvement included not only supporting and reinforcing school curricu-
lum, but expanding it as well.
BARBARA: At forty-six years of age, Barbara was a married, stay-at-home

mother of two children (in the fifth and sixth grades). Her husband was
employed as a business executive. Barbara and her husband were raised
in the Midwest. They met in college. Since that time, Barbaras husband
has pursued an advanced degree. Barbara describes her childhood com-
munity as small, middle class, and very close-knit. She was the daughter
of a Baptist minister. Her parents high expectations for educational

progress provided the motivation for her success in school; a tradition she
has tried to pass on to her children.
Unlike the previous parents, Barbara was quite critical of her chil-
drens teachers. Barbaras children attend school PWM, a predominantly
white magnet school that serves grades four to six. Negative experiences
with teacher interactions and declining achievement scores led Barbara
and her husband to seek alternatives to the traditional predominantly
black elementary school her children initially attended. She described
teachers in the previous school as lazy, and not interested in going be-
yond what was expected. They chose school PWM because of its high
test scores and for its reputation of excellence in the community. Trans-
portation to the school was not an issue because Barbara was able to
drive her children to the school herself.
As a parent, Barbara was compelled to be involved in the PTA, but
not just as a member. She stated, To be very honest, I choose involve-
ment activities because I find it necessary in order to be in the loop. So,
for example, Im chairing a PTA committee this year, which enables me
to attend PTA executive board meetings. She further clarified that being
in the loop meant that she had opportunities to be involved in school de-
cision making. Barbara shared an account of the first PTA meeting she at-
tended. She and her husband left the meeting feeling as though all of the
critical decisions had been decided and that the communication process
was one-sided, from the school to parents only. In her view, PTA general
meetings were for information only. From that moment on, they both
agreed that they needed to seek greater access to input in decision making
at the school. Through the yearly rotation of executive board or school
council roles each year, Barbara and her husband have . . . found a way
to get in there to be in the know, to influence things at the level they want
to. Barbara identified roles that enabled her to attend executive board
meetings in order to be . . . at the point of decision making, when I want
to be. She avoided high-ranking positions such as PTA president or
. . . as high up in the hierarchy as to have a whole lot of work. Instead,
she identified her purpose in assuming a role as finding . . . a role that
would grant me access. Even when granted access, Barbaras involve-
ment in decision making is at her discretion. . . . If I feel like I need to
garnish support for a particular thing, then Im in a position to go and do
that. But if not, I at least know its not that its being brought to me at the
level where this is it and this is how it is.
As suggested by Vicki, Barbara wanted to get to know the teachers
who were influencing her childrens lives on a daily basis. The type of ser-
vice she enjoyed most was her volunteer work with students rather than
her PTA involvement. Barbara believed that volunteering at the school
was part of a parents duty in what she refers to as . . . managing the

parent-teacher relationship. She remarked, We [parents] have to man-
age teachers. I find that Im most effective as a parent in support of our
children when I go and do things for the teachers. You have to go and
volunteer to do things that are helpful to the teacher like copying. It is
often a mundane task, copying for teachers hours at a time, but it is
something that helps them [teachers]. I find that the way teachers work
today, you really have to kind of get to know them in a way that allows
you to have some inroad with them.
To Barbara, inroad with teachers provided access to a relationship
such that later if there was a problem, teachers would be less likely to
take the patented approach with your child. In this way, the time Barbara
invested in doing chores for her childrens teachers lead to the building
of rapport and a reciprocal relationship throughout the year. Barbara
points out that she performs chores for teachers whether she liked
them or not because she was ultimately there for her children regardless
of who the teacher may be.
Although school PWM required sixteen hours of volunteering from
parents, Barbara contended that volunteering at the school requires a spe-
cial effort on the part of parent volunteers beyond just showing up. In fact,
she stated that she was distressed because she finds that she works so hard
to get what [she feels] is something that is just [her] right as a tax-paying
citizen. . . . But, I often wonder, now what if I had to work? How would
my children fare if I were not in the position to go and handle things? Part
of the barriers Barbara described included the cliquish environment of the
school. It seemed that the same parents held particular positions. Here I
am, a willing, able-bodied person whos willing to invest in not only her
child, but in the life of the school and then Ive got to find things to do. I
have had to ask, What can I do? What can I do? The response was, Well
maybe you could talk to a teacher about finding something.
Barbara attributed some of the difficulty she faced to the racial makeup
of the school. She reported, Part of the problem, well, you know, Its
[school PWM] really not representative of the county at-large. Its truly a lit-
tle private school within the county system. Theres just enough African-
Americans in there where I guess nobody can complain. Theres diversity.
They do have that, but its very selective. . . . They kind of throw us a little
bone, as it were. Thats how I feel about it. Barbaras description support
the findings of Daniel McGrath and Peter Kuriloff (1999) that school norms
including the behaviors of white, middle-class parents contributed to the
marginalization of ethnic minority and low-income parents. Barbaras mid-
dle-class status may have enabled her to overcome the barriers. Advantages
afforded her due to social class included the fact that she was a stay-at-home
mom, which provided the time to be persistent and consistent.
Barbara was also sensitive to issues of equity at the school. She

protested, They [school personnel] send home notices about different
things and theres just an understanding that everybody has the ability to
do whatever it is theyre asking. It doesnt take into account that if you
have any economic challenges, you know, you may. They assume no one
has economic challenges. Its like, they pretty much state this is how you
do it. You buy this. For example, school policies required children to
have two recorders [flute-like musical instruments], one for home and one
for school. Barbara further illustrated the effects of such policies when she
remarked, I can do this, but what if it werent that way. There are par-
ents that have challenges, so they may be the ones who leave, and of
course they would be us [African Americans] because they other ones are,
you know, its no big deal. Barbaras comments suggest an underlying in-
stitutional assumption that all of the students have middle-class parents.
For example, clubs choose specific types of, usually name brand, athletic
shoes and T-shirts as a requirement for participation. Outside of these ex-
pressions of concern for financially challenged families, Barbaras com-
ments suggested minimal collective agency, unlike Robert, Vicki, and Val.
Barbara reported that she supplements her childrens schooling expe-
rience with learning activities at home. She further explained that she en-
gaged in learning activities at home when she perceived that her children
were not getting something she deemed important at school, or when she
believed that the teacher was just teaching to the middle achievement
level of the classroom and therefore, not challenging her child enough. At
times, this meant that she needed to add to or reteach material covered
in class. As an example, she believed that her sons teacher did not place
enough emphasis on grammar in the classroom; therefore she and her
husband reviewed grammar, punctuation, and writing skills at home.
Similar to the working class and middle working class, Barbara be-
lieved it was her responsibility to make sure that the home-school part-
nership exists. However, unlike the other parents, Barbara expressed an
overall frustration in having to work for the quality education she be-
lieved her children deserved as children of taxpayers. Rather than express
empathy as other parents did, Barbara displayed a sense of entitlement
with regards to teachers role in her childrens educational process.
Barbara reported that she was very careful about developing rela-
tionships with parents that extended outside of the school and that de-
veloped into friendships. Unlike Vicki, Val, and Robert, Barbaras social
networks from within the school were filtered in a way that the few par-
ents she and her husband socialized with beyond schools appeared to
have values similar to their own. These relationships had an influence on
her childrens education through the sharing of ideas. While she did not
report relationships with her childrens teachers that went beyond school
walls, Barbara did state that she had friends and relatives who were
teachers. Though Barbaras social network were slightly more limited
than that of Vicki and Roberts, each of their networks reflected a depar-
ture from descriptions of African-American social networks found in
the literature (McGrath and Kuriloff, 1999) that suggest that African-
American parents do not employ social networks within the school.
Professional Middle Class

MARY: At the time of the study, Mary was serving as PTA president for
school PWM, the same school that Barbaras children attended. At age
fifty-one, Mary was a retired schoolteacher married to a higher-education
administrator in a business department of a local college. Just like Robert,
Mary and her husband had their children (second and fifth graders) later
in life. At the birth of her first child, Mary was a stay-at-home mom; how-
ever, after a few years as a volunteer mom, she went back to teaching in
the private Montessori school her children attended prior to going to
school PWM. Marys decision was prompted by her fascination with the
Montessori concept. Mary and her husband decided to seek a public
school provided they could attend school PWM, because of the excellent
reputation of the school. The change from private to public school was
contingent on Mary also becoming a stay-at-home mom again. Transfer-
ring from the Montessori school to school PWM was difficult. Mary re-
ported having to walk up and down the hallways of the Howard County
Board of Education building for two days before she found someone to
answer her questions regarding the lottery process and the appropriate
testing that would be required to transfer.
Dissimilar to Barbaras experience, Mary was able to head the Cul-
tural Arts Committee within her first year in school PWM. She decided to
take on the role . . . to bring about cultural diversity in the school. She
continued, I worked with the Board a lot on decisions and how diversi-
fication could be made in a more positive light and not a struggle and a
tug and pull. Unlike Vals cultural arts position, Marys role influenced
the diversification of the school staff and the student population, as well
as programs and curricula. Similar to the middle-class parents described
by Drummond and Stipek (2004), Mary was supportive of the school
even while noting areas in need of improvement. However, Marys posi-
tive stance toward improving the school differs from the frustration
expressed by Barbara.
Very similar to the previous parents, Mary believed in a partnership
between home and school. Like them, she also initiated the relationship
between herself and her childrens teachers. Describing her approach she
stated, I go and I introduce myself. I tell them who I am. I let them know
[who] my daughter is and if at any point in time you need to be in contact

with me, please dont hesitate to do so. . . .
Currently, she and her husband divide their time between school
PWM and another school in the district because school PWM only serves
grades four through six and their youngest was in the second grade. Dis-
tinctions exist in the parental involvement at each school. She observed,
At [predominantly Black regular school] you have a very small handful
of parents who are actively or aggressively involved, whereas I find that
at [school PWM] everybody is . . . I mean if its, I think theres 146 kids
in the sixth grade, I guarantee you, youre going to see twice that many at
PTA meetings because the dads attend too. Like Robert and Barbara,
Mary and her spouse take turns rotating positions of involvement at their
childrens schools such that during any given year, one of them served on
the executive board.
Mary and her husbands social class, influence, and power were dis-
played in her frequency and flexibility of school-based involvement. For
example, Mary stated she was . . . like a fixture on the walls when de-
scribing how often she and her husband visited the school. Moreover,
when their daughter went on a weeklong field trip one to two hours from
the school and neither Mary nor her husband were selected as chaperones
Mary said, Thats okay that you didnt choose me because well be there
every day. And I was. My husband got off work and we drove to [the des-
tination of the field trip] every day so that I could see her and make sure
she was okay. In addition, Mary and her husband made a personal
choice not to have their children ride on the school bus. Instead, they
each drop off and pick up their children. Their ability to do so reflected
the proximity of their home to the school, and the ease in which Marys
husband could alter his schedule for drop-offs and pickups.
Similar to Barbara, Mary was selective in having relationships with
other parents in the school that extended beyond the school. This year
was the first time she allowed her daughter, age eleven, to sleep over a
friends house. Describing the mother of that child Mary stated, Her
mom is an extremely active mom, high-visibility. Shes at the school every
day. Shes a Lunch Bunch Mom, so she does lunch daily. Shes in the
lunchroom and shes this and shes that. I know that her daughter has to
move within certain boundaries so I felt that I could trust with her being
three with the girls mom, in their home, and the [her daughter] would
come home in one piece. The mothers visibility in the school made
Mary comfortable yet, describing the relationship with the parent Mary
remarked, I would say not friends, but our kids go to the same school.
Shes a mom. Im a mom and we have the same interest as far as our chil-
dren are concerned. But, friends outside of the school, no. No. Data was
not collected related to the ethnicity of this parent.
Mary reported that she was motivated to be involved in her chil-

drens education due to several factors. First, she connects to her up-
bringing. I do not know any other way to be because this is how my
parents were with me. So, if I did anything less, then I would really feel
like I would be doing them a disservice for me. Second, she has observed
the . . . excitement and the joy that comes from my children when we see
each other at school. Third, she reported, I make sure that Im visible
in both of their schools because I dont want there to be no mistakes men-
tally in the fact that Im a highly proactive mom and highly involved. Fi-
nally, similar to Barbara, Mary sought access to decision making. She
responded, Im able to have a strong voice in decisions. For example,
when the issue of uniforms came up I was able to voice my opinion on
colors and the inclusion of jeans. Other areas of input include budget is-
sues and curriculum and instruction. Regarding her opportunity to have
input, Mary stated, My vote may not necessarily change it to what I see
as being right, but at least, like I told them, you know how I feel and Im
going to be giving you my opinion as to how I would think things should
be run or governed or done.
In all, Marys practices in the home and school were similar to Bar-
bara and Vicki; however, Mary had a more supportive attitude toward
her childrens school than Barbara. Even when Mary criticized her chil-
drens school she remained positive and offered a solution. Mary epito-
mizes the professional middle-class families discussed in Drummond and
Stipek in that mobility from a private school to a prestigious, public mag-
net school was feasible, given the location of the school and the flexibil-
ity of being a stay-at-home mother.
EDWARD: Edward represented the professional middle class as a private

practice lawyer. His wife occasionally helped run his office, but primarily
was a stay-at-home mother. At age fifty-one, Edward was beginning a
term of service as PTA president for school PBE2. Edward had three chil-
dren, two were adult age and one was in the fourth grade. He was more
involved now than he was when his older children were going through
public schools. He attributed the difference to his own maturity level.
Prior to becoming PTA president, Edward had always been highly
active with the PTA at school PBE2. He served on committees and vol-
unteered in his daughters classrooms. Reflecting on the five years he
spent as a parent at school PBE2 he commented, Parents that tend to be
involved on some level, whether its those who are involved heavily or
those who you can call on to do things when you need them, theyre usu-
ally parents who have had a college education or those who had some
college and to my knowledge, they always have graduated from high
school. So they know the value of education. He also commented on
the fact that the most supportive parents tend to be homogeneous in age
(forties and early fifties) as well, at school PBE2.
Edward remarked, Educating a child is a never-ending process. He
acknowledged the value of the home-school partnership, and he clearly
believed that he played an important role in his childrens education. He
attributed his own educational process to his belief in interdependent re-
lationships between home and school. He stated, Because of my edu-
cated backgrounds, were not going to sit back and allow other people
[teachers] to do all the work.
As PTA president, Edward believed that advocacy was the primary
function of the PTA. This differs from Barbaras view of the organization
because she felt as a general member, the organization served to dissemi-
nate information. Parents have to have some level of involvement. You
dont have to be an active PTA member, but I think you need to be a
member of the PTA. So at least your name will be on the roll. That way,
if the PTA leadership asks how many members do you have you can say
three hundred. Maybe all three hundred dont come to a meeting on a
regular basis, but it would be great to know if you needed your three
hundred members to come stand out in front of the building or meet you
at the board office, theyll be there because advocacy is that main thing
that PTA is about. Its not fundraising. Edward expressed a belief that
once parents spend time volunteering in school theyll . . . realize that
they need to do something in terms of enhancing something at the
school. He further stated that becoming a member of the PTA helps par-
ents identify the process involved in meeting the need they have identi-
fied. He acknowledged disparities between the abundance of resources of
the predominantly white schools in the northern part of the district and
of the limited resources in the southern part, where school PBE2 was lo-
cated. Of this situation he said, . . . those northern end schools are pre-
dominantly white and supposedly have more resources than us, but most
of those resources were brought into the building by parents. It is not that
the system [is] giving more. Examples of areas that have been improved
at school PBE2 included new books for teachers classrooms, test-taking
materials, a new playground, and equipment for the gym. Furthermore,
Edward said, What we have to fight against is that we have schools in
neighborhoods that are perceived or actually not receiving resources.
Edward reported that he had used his leverage as a lawyer on behalf
of the school to obtain resources for the school. For example, school
PBE2 was originally built for a school population of 600, but due to in-
creased new home construction the student population was approaching
1,000. Although the student population was growing, school resources
such as the cafeteria were not being expanded. Edward reported, The
cafeteria, the freezer, and some other things were in real bad shape. You
know, if you build a cafeteria for 600 and then you give them more kids,
well you need more staff. You go in there during lunchtime. Theyre flop-
ping around each other, burning, spilling. So the commitment that we got
recently that some of these things would be addressed, is based on the
fact that we have unsafe conditions. You know, when you start telling
people you have unsafe conditions and then one of your PTA presidents
is a lawyer, you dont have to say anything. No one wants a lawsuit!
Edwards social networks included politicians, teachers in and out-
side of his daughters school, church members, colleagues from volun-
teerism, community leaders, and neighbors. Before moving into this
district, Edward served on the Board of Education. He maintained friend-
ships from that experience. In addition, he was born and raised in a com-
munity very close to the district in which his daughter attended school.
Therefore, he had a deeper understanding of the history of the commu-
nity. He used his relationships with members of the community to advo-
cate for legislative advocacy and politics. At the time of the second
interview, Edward was running for political office.
Interestingly, Edward commented, I often tell people, being a member
of [the] PTA oftentimes pits your interest for your own child with the in-
terest of all the children. [The] PTA is for all children. And sometimes you
have to say, well Ive got to make sure I take care of my own too because
Im spending so much time for the group. Edward strived for a balance
between collective agency and advocating for his own childs education.
At home, Edward and his wife assisted with homework, and rein-
forced and supplemented his daughters education. You try to be a
teacher at home and you realize how difficult it must be in a room with
twenty-five of them. Trying to figure out how to teach a lesson from a
different angle, trying to motivate. A lot of it at home is motivation, I
think. Edward reported that he spent a lot of time monitoring his
daughters progress at school, trying to make sure that . . . if she doesnt
get it, it isnt because of behavior, not paying attention, sickness, or some-
thing else.
In order to monitor his daughters progress in school, Edward em-
phasized that he worked to build relationships with her teachers. He
stated, Shes in the fourth grade and I still walk her to her classroom
everyday. She wants me to, but also I walk her to the door and ask the
teacher how everything is going. For the most part she sees me one, twice,
three times a week. And I ask, is everything alright? And I mean it sin-
cerely because if theres something I can do as a parent, then I want to
know about it and Ill try to do it.
In general, Edwards form of involvement demonstrated empathy for
teachers and collective agency. He seemed to make parental involvement
synonymous to raising a child. His perspective was expressed clearly as
an advocacy organization. For him, PTA functions included disseminat-

ing information, fund-raising, volunteering, and taking political action,
all for the purpose of advocating on behalf of the children in the school.
In sum, the various perspectives of parents in this study support and
challenge previous research in parental involvement. Practices described
by the African-American parents in this study demonstrate involvement
in all six of the categories found in Epsteins (1995) topology. However,
Epstein did not fully capture all of the nuances of African-American
parental involvement found in this community such as advocacy and
monitoring of teachers actions. Furthermore, Epsteins home-school
partnership model does not consider the sense of entitlement brought to
school by more educated parents and by the subsequent willingness of
these parents to be strong advocates for their childrens well-being. This
suggests that the more we learn about diverse families, the more we learn
about family involvement in general.
The findings from this study also inform the intersection of race and
class. Schools have been slow in acknowledging that working-class and
middle-class parents might contribute in effective, albeit in different
ways. Schools also seem to expect black and white families to become in-
volved in similar ways. While the literature acknowledges that teachers
do tend to expect less interest and involvement from poor parents of
color, the experiences of the working- and middle-class families in this
study suggest that expectations and compliance overall is remarkably
similar for black and white parents.
The striking similarities between white and black parents involve-
ment and their explanations for why they are involved may be interpreted
in several ways. One possible explanation is that similar forms of in-
volvement may be effective for all children, regardless of background,
suggesting that parental support is generic. On the other hand, the simi-
larities in forms and explanations for involvement may be surprising as
black students continue to lag behind their white peers in academic
achievement. This selection of black parents engaged in forms of involve-
ment very similar to those documented in the literature such as volun-
teering in classrooms, performing routine clerical tasks, supervising
academic practice (primarily in the area of literacy), assuming leadership
positions within established organizations, and in the case of middle-class
parents, the assumption of more of a watchdog role to oversee their
childrens education. Middle-class parents were much more strategic in
establishing networks and positioning themselves to have access to infor-
mation; working-class parents sometimes had access to social networks
through which they learned things in schools, but for these parents, this
access was more accidental than strategically sought.
For the most part, the stories told by these parents represent compli-
ance with conventional forms of involvement expected by schools. As
parents invoke these forms of involvement, schools gain, but what losses
occur if parents refrain from participating in practices more specifically
responsive to the needs of their children? Possible losses include limited
or no advocacy related to institutional racism. Barbara, whose children
attended the predominantly white magnet school, described some of the
injustices experienced at school, but did not indicate what she might be
doing about it in her position of involvement. Another parent, Edward,
insists that differences in resources at white and black schools are attrib-
utable to parents, not to the system. Some of the parents talked of sup-
porting curriculum enhancement around issues of diversity, but there was
discussion about advocacy for specific educational needs of black chil-
dren or achievement gaps that children like theirs were likely to experi-
ence. Parents also did not indicate a need for specific information about
the ways in which their children might have to plan their futures in a dif-
ferent way from white children.
Finally, this study did not explore the perspectives of the specific
schools represented regarding the ways in which school staff might draw
on cultural or community strengths and the understandings of black par-
ents to foster deeper partnerships in order to address achievement gaps.
Further research is needed to examine the extent to which schools possess
the characteristics of successful parental involvement programs as found
in previous research.
As African-American parents invoke these forms of involvement
rather than other possible forms, they will be more responsive to the needs
of their children within and across social class. For example, regardless of
social class, parents in this study took the initiative toward establishing
and maintaining working relationships with their childrens teachers.
Working-class mothers purposely dropped their children off to school in
the morning just like the professional middle-class parents with the pur-
pose of providing frequent informal touchstones with the teacher through-
out the year. In addition, parents subscribed to Epsteins (1995)
overlapping spheres model of interdependence between home and school.
Epsteins (1995) six forms of parental involvement were well repre-
sented by the home- and school-based practices of the parents in this study.
However, social class differences were observed in the motivations for learn-
ing activities at home. Unlike Drummon and Stipek (2004) the managerial
and professional middle-class families in this study reported that they
extended and surpassed learning at home, based on their observations
of missing topics such as black history or parents perceived shortcomings of
a teachers practice. This demonstrates that the degree of interdependence
between home and school changed with the social class of the parents.
Working-class parents reported engagement in learning activities at home
that were supportive of learning at school. In comparison, professional and
managerial middle-class parents indicated that they extended the school cur-
riculum by having their children learn more about particular topics and at
times middle-class parents also used learning activities at home to make up
for a perceived weakness in teachers practices. Furthermore, middle-class
parents would be classified as more self-efficacious in that they voiced their
intentions to be involved in school decision making. Unfortunately, in this
study opportunities for decision making appeared to be mediated by the
limited number of positions on the PTA executive board, which may
explain the disparity between the large number of African-American parents
who wanted to be involved in school decision making compared to the
few parents who reported actual opportunities in Nancy Chavkin and
David Williams (1993).
Examining social class in terms of occupational power not only
demonstrated the extent to which parents could be in the classroom, but
also indicated the quality and purpose of parents social networks. Shel-
don (1998) demonstrated that homogeneous social networks were asso-
ciated with lower levels of achievement and that low-income parents
tended to have more homogeneous social networks than middle-class
parents. In this study, Val, the working-class mother who served as a
PTA committee chair had more opportunity to forge relationships with
teachers other than her own childrens teachers. While achievement data
were not collected as part of this study, data show that Vals perspective
of parental involvement was broad compared to that of Bettys network,
which was limited by the inflexibility of her work schedule.
Given the diverse experiences of parents in this study, the intersec-
tions of race and class merit much further consideration than has been
available to date in the literature on parent involvement. This chapter
represents one step in that direction.
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8
SOCIAL HETEROGLOSSIA
THE CONTENTIOUS PRACTICE OR POTENTIAL
PLACE OF MIDDLE-CLASS PARENTS IN
HOMESCHOOL RELATIONS
Janice Kroeger
Within the last several decades researchers have documented the impor-
tance of parent involvement in academic achievement, measuring the ef-
fects of parents activities with schools and children as one influence on
school success (Booth and Dunn, 1996). Joyce L. Epstein has argued that
the strategies teachers use with parents are key factors in increasing the
active roles parents play in classrooms; parents, too, exert influence on
school climate (1986, 1996). Recent discussions have accounted for ac-
tive parent networks, uncovering the links within families social groups.
Steven B. Sheldon found that parents with more connections to other par-
ents within communities engaged in heightened parentschool activity
(2002). Although we realize the ways in which parents beliefs and be-
haviors generate values about school and influence childrens accom-
plishments (solidifying the link between involvement, expectations, and
student skills and achievement), we also know that parenting strategies
for success and thus cultural capital contrast with the variety of ethnic,
social-class, and linguistic groups (Bright, 1994, 1996a; Diamond, Wang,
and Gomez, 2004; Hidalgo et al., 1995; Okagaki and Frensch, 1998;
Wentzel, 1998). What we know a great deal less about, however, is how
schools with urban diversity support parent involvement when their fam-
ily populations are intersecting, cross-racial, multilinguistic, and com-
posed of a broad variety of social classes, such as those in many of
203
204 Janice Kroeger
todays schools. This chapter reveals tensions and possibilities within one
diverse community.
National policies have urged every school to promote partnerships
that will increase parental involvement and participation in promoting
the social, emotional, and academic growth of children; many schools
have used such policies as a springboard to important reform addressing
disparities in achievement among children based on minority economic,
racial, and language status (National Education Goals Panel, 2000). Such
national foci suggest that the more parents are involved in schools, the
better-off children will be; yet theorists have also uncovered the darker
side of parent participation within the activity of the middle class, the
aforementioned working individualistically to benefit their own with
questionable consequences or counterresults for the children of others
(Brantlinger and Majd-Jabbari, 1998; Lareau, 1989). Recent productive
approaches to urban school reform suggest studies of school communities
as ecologies with nested concerns of groups to be shared, acted upon,
and improved, not by lone individuals but by powerful school and parent
leaders marshalling resources (Giles, 1998).
This research focuses on the potential of the active middle class and the
findings come from an ethnographic portrait in a diverse urban primary
school. This chapter, which features an analysis of how homeschool rela-
tions, are recast by, and in relation to, majority dominance, gives an ac-
count of a small group of people making sense of experiences in order to
produce action and community. The findings reveal social checks and bal-
ances, highlighting the individualistic, collectivist, and seemingly interre-
liant manner in which middle-class parents operated vis--vis the school,
children, and other parents, who came from the minority with respect to
language, social class, and ethnicity. This chapter is a mirror on a portion
of this schools ecology, implicating the critical nature of parent activity
in schools.
Theoretical Frame: Social Heteroglossia

The nature of Highland School is best described by the term heteroglossia, a
theoretical concept that describes a social and literary wholeness made of
the particularistic elements of the languages of many groups in a culture
(Bakhtin, 1935/1981). Bakhtin argued that what languages have in com-
monthe only thing they all have in commonis that they are each specific
points of view on the world, forms for conceptualizing the world in words,
specific world views, each characterized by its own projects, objects, mean-
ings, and values (pp. 29192). Although Bakhtin used the terms languages
and utterances in variation, his point was that utterances are always at least
two-sided acts, belonging to both speakers and listeners and to those whose
Social Heteroglossia 205
voices are heard in the word; therefore, the word discourse lives, as it
were, on the boundary between its own context and another, alien context
(p. 284). Overall, any spoken utterance has its own intention, a social in-
tention, which is beyond the word, the speaker, and listener, as its own task
or project (Morris, 1994; Morson and Emerson, 1990).
Much like the ways in which Bakhtin described shared utterances be-
tween speaker and listeners as existing on boundaries, the five neighbor-
hoods of Highland and their constituents existed in an endless cycle of
dialogic relations with one another. Without one faction of the commu-
nity, the others could not exist; without describing low-income parents
and their children, Highland could not be called an urban reformed
school with the advantages conferred upon it by the middle- and high-in-
come families from professionally situated lives. The double-sided nature
of social relations at Highland seemed polemical, fraught with tensions,
and ripe for possibility. As one parent stated: Well, while we might like
to think that we are all one population and one big happy family in the
school, I really see there being racial and social divides and not a lot of
crossing of that. Certainly there is no crossing of boundaries at the level
of the families. One of the first things I noticed early on in Williams [his
son] schooling was that it was always the white families that were there.
Minority parents werent there. With the children I think there is a better
connection across ethnic and racial divides (Sols father, October 29,
2000, pp. 56).
This parent reflects Mikhail M. Bakhtins (1981) notion of heter-
oglossia, in which opposing forces collide and comprise as close a locus
as possible to moments in discourse when centripetal and centrifugal
forces collide (p. 123). In language, indeed in every utterance, social ten-
sions are present: those that have the potential to unify social meanings
and those that have the potential to disturb meanings. Thus, language as a
living entity continuously re-creates culture and its possibilities. Bakhtin
defined centripetal forces as social arrangements in language that unify a
concept (or group) and centrifugal forces as outer-reaching, unpredictable,
disorganized, and unwieldy forces breaking shared meaning and social
purposes of language (or social organizations) apart. Bakhtin claimed that
the discourse of the novel conveys the conflict between official and unoffi-
cial doctrines of culture. I use the concept of heteroglossia in this work to
examine the ways in which informants in this study displayed the con-
flicting meanings of social groups within this particular time and place.
The results of my interpretive analysis continually show the character of
individual people and the characteristics of groups of people constructed
relationally to each other. By rendering the social heteroglossia within
Highlands parent and student community, I convey the existence of clash-
ing social groups within the schools larger parent community.
206 Janice Kroeger
Site Description and Interpretive

Research Methods
Located in a large Midwestern city, Highland School1 served students
from kindergarten through the third grade. During the year of data col-
lection, according to school records, the school population was classified
as 38% impoverished, 34% ethnic and racial minority (consisting of
African-American, Latino, and Hmong groups), and 66% European
American. District leaders and school personnel developed desegregation
strategies throughout the city to combat resource inequities (Confiden-
tial, Highland Principal, 1998). The school drew children and parents
from five very different neighborhoods (see table 1).
Table 1
Highland Schools Neighborhood Descriptions
Waterside A multilingual and multiracial community. Residents live in

International a large public-assisted housing complex. Some of Highlands
community Latino and Hmong families live at Waterside. The area is
home to low-income families of European and African-Ameri-
can ancestry as well as new immigrant status
Highland A neighborhood of mixed ethnic and racial groups from both
neighborhood white-collar and blue-collar occupations. Residents are both
renters and homeowners and primarily speak English.
South Green A neighborhood zoned for residence and business, bordering
Street area both Highland and Waterside International. Residents are of
mixed racial and linguistic groups and live in low-income,
public assistance, and rental units. The area is home to
African-American, Latino American, and European American
groups, many earning a living in service industries, such as
restaurants and retail.
Village Grove A residential neighborhood with rental properties, student
neighborhood housing, and single-family homes. Heads of households work
in white-collar and blue-collar industry. The racial makeup is
predominantly white with an ethnic and linguistic mix associ-
ated with university students.
Gravenswood A residential neighborhood populated by middle- to upper-
neighborhood middle-income families and professionals associated with a
university, health fields, and civic occupations. The Gravens-
wood neighborhood contains Gravenswood Elementary School,
Highlands paired school. Residents rent or own homes, and
there is a heavy population of retirees, a small portion of stu-
dents, and many families of mostly European American ancestry.
There are very few Latino, African-American, or Hmong.
Each neighborhood had its own particular character, and economic,

racial, and linguistic qualities often blurred at the edges. Reform strate-
gies were used to accommodate neighborhood diversity at the school,
including mixed-age grouping, in-class delivery of special services (in-
cluding English as a Second Language [ESL], Talented and Gifted [TAG],
and Special Education), smaller class size, and Developmentally Appro-
priate Practices, including active hands-on learning strategies and age ap-
propriate curriculum (Bredekamp and Copple, 1997). Title I moneys
were used for Reading Recovery Services and for empowerment groups
for parents of racial and linguistic minority students who had a history of
lower school achievement than their white counterparts (Confidential,
Highland Principal, 1998).
The parent and school personnel informant pool for this study
were derived from a firstsecond grade classroom with a veteran
teacher, Marlene Spencer. Focal informants provided access to a full
range of homeschoolcommunity events for the duration of the study,
in which the researcher analyzed the content and process of home
school events for individuals and for groups of families and also stud-
ied the identity and social group memberships of a small number
of parents.
In such an approach the distinctiveness of one person or group is
downplayed, and attention is redirected to the cultural forms that con-
nect and construct various people in context (Eisenhart, 1999). This
multi-aged classroom was chosen because of the dimensions and range of
differences in parents race, social class, language, sexual orientation, eth-
nicity, marital status, and family structure. The perspective this re-
searcher took was intentionally disruptive to the common use of
diversity, usually defined as a minority-only concept; therefore, informa-
tion was solicited from a range of parents from both majority and mi-
nority groups (Kroeger, 2001).
Among the families in the study classroom, 11 were of two-parent,
middle or high income, professional European American background;
3 were of two-parent, working-class, European American, Hmong
American, or Chinese American background; and 2 were two-parent or
single-parent welfare recipients of Hmong American and African-Amer-
ican descent. The primary languages spoken by the parents were English,
Hmong, and Mandarin. Focal parents included a first-generation
Hmong father, a European American father who was a gay activist, and
a European American mother who was one of several Parent Teacher
Organization (PTO) leaders. For contrast with the focal parents, the re-
searcher selected eight peripheral parents from the classroom who were
queried about emerging issues related to community partnerships within
the school.
208 Janice Kroeger
Qualitative methodology was used, including observations made in

the classroom, school, home, and community as well as short intensive
interviews conducted before and after homeschool events. Data sources
included audio taped interviews with the focal teacher, school personnel,
focal parents, peripheral parents, and a small set of children. A total of 81
observations, 59 interviews, and 79 memos were generated during the
20002001 school year. Analysis of data was ongoing, and the researcher
attended to the immediate and local meanings of actions as defined by
the actors points of view (Erikson, 1986). Expanded field notes from
observation (Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw, 1995) were coded for a priori
and emergent themes in an ongoing fashion. Themes were triangulated
among observations, artifacts, and interview transcripts2 (Graue and
Walsh, 1998). A uniform set of questions related to educational experi-
ence, social history, and student participation with Highland was posed
to focal parents. A less intensive set of questions related to events and ac-
tivities was posed to both focal and peripheral parents, based on themes
arising within the community.
Member checks in the form of raw classroom field notes and written
cases shared with the focal teacher and parents substantiated informants
meaning. For interviews and member checks with the parents of Hmong
and Mandarin students, the researcher secured the translation and tran-
scription services of speakers from each dialect or language (independent
of those available in the school)3 (Fielding and Fielding, 1986). Transla-
tions and transcriptions of Hmong and Mandarin data were then cross-
checked for accuracy of meaning for a second time with another proficient
speaker of each dialect or language.
Parent Involvement and

Highland School
Three major categories of opportunity were available for parent involve-
ment at Highland, including those structured by the first-grade teacher,
Marlene Spencer, in the focal classroom, those relating to restructuring
and school improvement created by school staff, and those created by the
active Highland/Gravenswood Parent Teacher Organization. This analy-
sis features the strong presence of the middle class in certain venues, par-
ticularly classroom volunteering and PTO activity (see table 2).
Parents from Spencers classroom chose from among the many events
produced at the school. Table 3 describes the families, their location in
the community, and their participation and attendance at events during
one year and illustrates the relationship among neighborhood location,
event production, and parental attendance.
Table 2
Parent Involvement Opportunities at Highland School
Focal Restructuring HighlandGravenswood

Classroom Plan PTO
Ready-Set-Go Title I adaptations weekly community
conference parent handbooks newsletter
fall Open House in Hmong and PTO monthly
fall and spring Spanish meetings
parentteacher parent call line committees,
conferences in Hmong and dontations and
take-home Spanish funding
folders ongoing parenting Fundraisers
weekly newsletters groups for Sock hop
minority
routine and fall and spring
parents
novel book fairs
School
volunteer Gravenswood
Improvement
opportunities Carnival
Plan
report card miscellaneous sales
Market-Day
discussions PTO Academic
celebrations
end-of-year Events
assemblies for
classroom Authors Tea
parents and
performance
children Star Math
mentoring experiences
program After-school second-
ESL family language classes
potluck
International
dinner
Parents/Adults
Sallie & Martin Arola
Helen & James Jacobs

Paige & Robert Cartier
Michael Colton & Donald Lake

Laurel Strauss & Joel Henderson
Gravenswood Location in Community

RSG

Open House
Fall Parent Teacher

Conference

Classroom Volunteer
Spring Parent Teacher
Conference
End-of-Year Classroom

Performance
Table 3
Ongoing parenting meetings

for AA, Hmong, and Latino
Boundary Issues meetings

Market Day Events
Mentoring Program

Balanced Literacy Review
ESL Family Potluck
Events Offered at Highland School
Families in Spencers Classroom Participate at Highland School Activities

International Dinner
PTO Monthly Meetings &

Committees
Sock-Hop

Fall & Spring Book Fairs
Gravenswood Carnival

Authors Tea

Star Math Experiences
Afterschool Second

Language Classes
(continued)
Parents/Adults Events Offered at Highland School
Sandra Stewart & Paul Koester
Rachel Summers & David Cash
Betsy & Walter Cline
Mae Chao & J. Smith
Highland-Gravenswood
Eva Blasius & Howard Wilson
(biological father)
Stephanie & Mike Landers
Village Grove
Hig
Angela & Anthony McNeal hla
nd
LaAsha Hurston
South
Waterside
Elisabeth & Nao Kao Moua
International
Green Street &

So
Mai Ling Cheng & Khang Shui Greuth
Stre en
et
Wa
Bao Ly Vue & Qhousa Vue ters
lide
212 Janice Kroeger
Opportunities and Volunteerism

in Spencers Classroom
Spencer provided routine opportunities for families who wanted to be in-
volved in a variety of ways throughout the school year. These were de-
signed to inform parents about classroom instruction and offered
suggestions for supporting children at home (Epstein, 1996). Spencers
activities also gave parents a chance to discuss their knowledge of chil-
dren or to contribute materials or skills to the classroom; however, sev-
eral of Spencers opportunities lay outside the realm of access of some
parents, the forces of social class, ability, and linguistic clout influencing
how and why parents participated (Delgato-Gaitan, 1991; Lareau 1989;
Lareau and Horvat, 1999; Lareau and Shumar, 1996). In volunteering,
parents participated in varying capacities, and all classroom volunteers
came from upper middle-class professional families (see table 3). Al-
though Spencers class was diverse, volunteers were not. Spencer ex-
plained her strategies for recruiting parents. Realizing that not all parents
would be able to assist, she framed volunteering as a request: Before
school begins, I always talk about the chance to volunteer. I try to have a
schedule at that point with the times that I really need volunteers in the
classroom. And I try to present it in such a way that they dont feel guilty
if they cant do it, . . . but I want you to know that you are really welcome
to participate in this way (October 13, 2000, p. 14).
Spencer benefited from the parents time, expertise, visits, and inter-
est, but so did the entire class. Describing the parent volunteer cadre, she
said: I think weve had 9 [parent volunteers] on a regular basis, either
weekly or biweekly. We also have a grandmother who volunteers (Octo-
ber 13, 2000, p. 14).
Distributing Skill and an Emerging Ethos of Responsibility

Volunteers were integral to the smooth operation of the centers and to in-
depth exploration of topics; and most importantly, they served as adult
intermediaries, supporting childrens experience and mastery of the cur-
riculum. Seven parents and two community volunteers raised the adult-
to-child ratio to about 5:1 during a typical literacy block, creating an
active curriculum with many language opportunities.
Parent volunteers verbalized their desire to enjoy and to get to know
the children, to support individual students and the teacher, and to sup-
port the classroom and school as a learning community. Volunteer expe-
riences both perpetuated the power of middle-class parents and gave this
active parent group insight into the perspectives and needs of students
who were not their own offspring, thus sometimes altering their under-
standing of their own roles as members of a diverse urban school. In-

structional time was not interrupted by pullout services; instead an in-
class curriculum model with differentiated instruction was implemented
(Confidential, Highland Principal, 1998).
Sallie, an European American mother who had worked as a lab tech-
nician but chose to stay at home with her young children, captured the
essence of the parent volunteer community in the following way: At High-
land School I think many parents really care, and they are not only willing
to do for their own kids, but they do for other kids. We realize that it is the
right thing to do because not all kids have parents that can. It makes the
community better for everyone. It becomes a caring group of people, and
there are fewer kids to fall through the cracks (May 17, 2001, p. 40).
Helen, another Gravenswood parent with an office managerial posi-
tion, worked every other week in Spencers room. She commented on the
peer group: A good thing about volunteering is that you get to know
kids. I have loved it. It gives me insight, and certain things Margaret
[daughter] talks about are clearer. I know almost all of the kids, and
every other week either Margaret or Margarets twin sister Gwendolyn
has me in her room (January 9, 2001, p. 1).
Helen expressed a sentiment common among parents. She had posi-
tive contact with other members in the childrens group. She found it in-
teresting to see how different kids learn, work together, and help each
other (January 9, 2001, p. 1). She commented about the variety of learn-
ing occurring within Spencers room and, like Sallie, could articulate how
her involvement in the classroom mattered to students other than her
daughter. She related an attempt to motivate a student to write: I helped
Chantilia to sound out words. She knew most of them. The group
worked well together. [This was] the first time that Ive worked with
Chantilia in particular. She worked out words from the board. She had
done five whole lines and then began to erase. I stopped her and com-
mented that shed done quite a lot of work to stop and quit. I said, Are
you sure, Chantilia? Youve done an awful lot of work. You have a good
product (January 9, 2001, p. 1).
Volunteer parents worked in different ways, but they shared what
appeared to be an emerging ethos of responsibility toward learners. Sallie
volunteered at both Highland and Gravenswood schools (Highlands
paired third- to fifth-grade school). She reflected upon her childs room,
stating, I benefit a lot when I am there. I help a lot of kids. And a lot of
kids are getting special time and attention from me, not just my daugh-
ter (May 17, 2001, p. 30).
The insight about Highland reflected the academic and social pres-
sures with which teachers, children, administrators, and parents strug-
gled. Sallie appreciated the heterogeneous grouping that supported her
214 Janice Kroeger
childs special learning needs as well as those of all children: . . . Spencer

mixes things up, and so my daughter, who has speech and language diffi-
culty, didnt feel that she was at the low end. Students pick up on that,
and it mustve been Christmas before she even noticed that there were
some other first graders who were reading better than she was. And at
that point she was motivated to read at home with us. She forged ahead
(May 17, 2001, p. 14).
Sallie focused on classroom grouping experience, which together
with reduced class size improved the odds that her daughter would con-
tinue to be motivated and master early reading. Consistent with parental
involvement among middle-class parents (Lareau, 1989), Sallie moni-
tored her daughters progress; moreover, she noticed the reform strategies
supporting all readers. She commented: If everyone had known who is
in the bottom group, that would have been very hard and affected read-
ing for Anne . . . [Sallies daughter]. She would have gotten into the per-
ception that she is a poor reader. It would have been hard to encourage
her to work on it. I give Marlene and Cathy [a special educator] credit for
working with the kids in heterogeneous groups and designing it to really
help them. I am amazed when I go in and see Marlene working with just
one or two children on reading (May 17, 2001, p. 14).
Sallies concern extended the benefits of her involvement to children
other than Anne. She drew attention to the importance of the Highland
parent volunteers, especially altering the ratios of adults-to-children,
which is advantageous for reading: The new governor wants to increase
class size from 15. I thought these kids just would not be where they are.
In Marlenes room two kids who could not write their letters at the be-
ginning of the year are now writing and sounding out entire words. That
would not be possible if you have 24 kids! How many classrooms have
the parent volunteers where you can have the ratio of 4 kids to one adult
during a 2-hour language arts block? It doesnt always happen that way.
If you have only one teacher, they [the students] are not going to be ready
for the 3rd grade (May 17, 2001, p. 15).
When she spoke of the two children who could not write letters at
the beginning of the year, Sallie referred to first-grade English language
learners. This mother expanded her understanding of Annes needs with
recognition of the needs of other children. She continued, And theyve
got to get that help at the lower grades. This is my very strong feeling
from seeing kids make 2 years of progress in one.
Solomon is another child in Spencers room; his father recognized the
link between volunteers in this urban classroom and the current issues
surrounding early school achievement. He described what he saw as a dif-
ference between his own upbringing and the needs of todays schools:
I went through public schools . . . in a wealthy district. . . . There was

no ethnic mix till High School. There are many differences now. Then,
parents participation was only for field trips, and of course that was
[for] mothers. . . . These days teachers really need the help in the class-
room that parents give. . . . Parent helpers come in on a daily basis and
help run math centers. A reason for appealing for the extra help is that
there is such a wide range of abilities. Im hesitating because this is sort
of a negative comment about children from low socioeconomic back-
grounds who have difficulty sitting still [and] staying on task, and an ex-
pert adult helps in certain situations. . . . Trying to attend to all of the
kids is a tough job for a teacher. (October 2000, pp. 1418)
Each of these parents recognized that the individualized instruction

provided by teachers and supported by classroom volunteers mattered to
everyones school achievement. Although Solomons fathers comments
were laced with critical evaluations of children from backgrounds of
poverty, the perception of how volunteers support schools reflected an
understanding common to Highland and to the literature (Epstein, 1996).
Spencer relied upon her volunteer cadre to assist small groups of chil-
dren while she alternately worked with individual students and small in-
structional groups. In fact Solomons fathers comment reflected the
classroom he saw. Parent involvement in Spencers room was important,
but it seemed especially so for those struggling in relation to peers
which, in this researchers estimation, included children from both mid-
dle-income and impoverished backgrounds.
Participation in the classroom remained high but was hard won.
Lengthy vacations and illnesses made volunteering impossible for some;
other parents stepped in and filled empty slots (Memo, November 2000;
Colton, April and May 2001). Although volunteering evoked strong
compassion, charity, and altruism and could arguably be construed as a
misguided obligation, volunteers commitment and flexibility were qual-
ities that circumvented the collapse of Spencers learning community.
Cross-Family Associations and New Alliances

Parent volunteers learned about children outside their own neighbor-
hoods. In certain instances, European American parents advocated for
children who were not their own but for whom they had assumed a mod-
icum of responsibility through their school connection. School-mentoring
programs, individual motivations, and a focus on diversity, achievement,
and community, all supported their efforts and intentions.
Village Grove and Gravenswood parent advocacy for children from
the Waterside and South Green Street neighborhoods sometimes moved
216 Janice Kroeger
beyond classroom volunteering or school wide mentoring; however,

when advocacy occurred, some parents gestures were small, for example,
making costumes for end-of-year productions or supporting and sustain-
ing cross-neighborhood friendships or driving kids to and from school.
In contrast with smaller connections among parents of various neigh-
borhoods, two unusually strong parent-to-parent networks operated
on behalf of students and Highlands parent community. Each of these
parent-to-parent networks was distinctive. Middle-class mothers moved
out of their insular relations with other European Americans into High-
lands communities of color. First, I will describe a series of connections
arranged by a parent named Marietta on behalf of Spencers student
Weiyi; then I will describe an unusual cross-neighborhood alliance entitled
PATHWAYS led by Laurel, a parent in Spencers classroom. Both women
were European American, middle class, and professional.
Supporting Weiyi
Marietta, a mother with an interracial marriage and bilingual and bi-
racial children, was a source of uncommon support for Spencer. Marietta
lived in the Village Grove neighborhood and supported second-grader
Weiyi and his mother Mai Ling, relatively new arrivals living in the South
Green Street area. Marietta, a medical language interpreter, commented:
Weiyis dad and I used to stand outside and wait together and yack. And
I would always talk to him because I knew he couldnt talk to anyone else
at Highland. I think that is how Spencer got to know that it was possible
for me to interpret for them (Chang, February 5, 2001, p. 2).
Because Highland served few Mandarin families, no site-based inter-
preter was available for this group. Marietta helped Spencer arrange con-
ferences and became an educational support person for Weiyi; likewise,
she argued for her own childrens maintenance of Chinese language and
culture. She commented: It is hard to raise bilingual children, especially
in a place like Highland, where English is spoken a lot. They [my chil-
dren] are never going to go out and meet that language [Mandarin] with-
out our engineering it. And so, it makes them see that there are good
reasons for them to be bilingual. We want them to be proud of being Chi-
nese. We want to communicate to them in a big way so that they will feel
that they can stand up to pressure to conform or assimilate (February
5, 2001, p. 9).
Highland paid Marietta a small stipend for her services, but she vowed
to translate regardless. Marietta was available throughout Weiyis second-
grade year, relaying messages from school to the parents restaurant and
back again to Spencer. Marietta updated Mai Ling on changes in Weiyis
academic needs, scheduled conferences for Spencer, and ensured that his
parents knew of extended vacations or snow days. Chang helped Spencer

discuss problems of concern to Weiyis reading achievement and to inter-
actions with other children.
Mai Ling attended every conference facilitated by Marietta. Mai Ling
commented that before gaining Mariettas support, she and her husband
were paralyzed in communications, stating, Weiyis father can listen, but
if he did not understand, he could do nothing because there was no trans-
lator (M. Cheng, trans. Yu, November 13, 2000, p. 4:11). Weiyis par-
ents came to no school events other than the conferences at which Spencer
had requested their attendance; both worked long hours and managed a
staff of twelve employees. Recognizing that better involvement, resulting
from the translation support of Marietta, was more important than more
frequent involvement, Spencer considered this relationship to be highly
successful. Without the volunteer support, the relationship would have
evolved differently; moreover, Weiyis school success was altered in a pos-
itive and lasting way by a parent outside of his family.
Cross-Neighborhood Alliances in PATHWAYS

PATHWAYS was a cross-racial, multilingual parentteacher group spon-
sored by Highland PTO funding and led by a parent in Spencers room,
Laurel, a psychologist with a private practice. Laurels son Solomon was
doing quite well; Laurel worked as a classroom volunteer and a school men-
tor, supporting a kindergartner in another room. Her role in PATHWAYS
entailed shared leadership with a Latino mother. The groups purpose was
to improve minoritymajority relations. She stated: PATHWAYS operates
under the auspices of the PTO. We are a group of parents and some teach-
ers. Last spring we met a couple of times. We dont have any Hmong par-
ents in the group, but several African-American parents and a growing
number of Hispanic parents, and a variety of others. Many are European
American. We are trying to build bridges across all of the communities of
the school (June 25, 2001, p. 12).
PATHWAYS met, developed an agenda, and provided an outlet for
the often tension-filled, cross-cutting concerns of education with race,
language, economic status, sexual orientation, and student and family
marginalization in the school.
The twelve to sixteen parents and two teachers attending PATH-
WAYS meetings were energized during conversations. Heated topics
included the following: problematizing black children; minority overrep-
resentation in special education; language issues; cultural dissonance
among teachers, students, and parents; problems of poverty; poor per-
ceptions of low-income families and children; and equity regarding gen-
der and sexual orientation.
218 Janice Kroeger
PATHWAYS operated differently from other school-led organiza-

tions. The issues raised were those that parents felt school staff ignored,
and its members bridged the artificial divisions separating majority
minority parents from different neighborhoods. Despite background
experience and professional or lay status, these parents of varying back-
grounds operated as equals without a school-imposed agenda. PATH-
WAYS members had an opportunity to voice concerns and to listen to the
needs of people outside of their own, often insular, social groups. Partic-
ipants of PATHWAYS raised cross-group awareness, discussed social
problems, and built alliances. The group, led by one middle-class parent
volunteer and her Latino collaborator, achieved social integration among
parents, something the school itself had achieved only in the classroom
but never fully among parents. PATHWAYS cut across the social divi-
sions within the community, linking those European American parents
and teachers with an interest in issues of social justice and diversity with
parents of color.
Although PATHWAYS met every other month, they netted little at-
tention from the wider Highland school administration. Spencer seemed
unaware of the group, and the PTO, its sponsoring organization, gave it
scant attention. Laurel expressed reservations about the continued exis-
tence of PATHWAYS: It is hard to know what will happen with the
group next. I feel that many people care about these issues, but few are
willing to put the time and effort in or even know how to keep it going.
PATHWAYS is enormously draining. . . . The connections made across
groups were wonderful, but I worry that PATHWAYS is not going any-
where (Strauss, June 25, 2001, p. 12).
Laurel questioned the events structuring the entire school commu-
nity; these were typically disjointed entities (see table 2). As an active par-
ent she questioned the long-term efficacy of maintaining separations
among the many groups of parents at Highland even if these separations
were inadvertent: I think there is a definite place for groups to organize
within themselves and feel strong and powerful. There is a definite place
for individuals to form community when you are working with people
like yourself, but then I am not a separatist. I think an important next
step is to connect everybody and have a place where every group of the
school is coming together (Strauss, June 25, 2001, p. 13).
For Laurel, mentoring and producing connections to the many par-
ents in PATHWAYS grew out of her responsibility to her son as well
as to the children of others. Laurel noted that the work of PATHWAYS
would likely cease, especially if she reduced the amount of time she
dedicated to it. Nevertheless, she believed simply to connect was
enormously important.
Volunteering and Contentions Boundary Reinscriptions
In the aforementioned sections, middle-class parents seemed receptive,

even generative of an ethos of responsibility toward children and toward
other social groups beyond their own. Their overarching concerns might
lie on what Bakhtin would characterize as a discursive boundary. Al-
though these parents words were populated with the intentions of their
own priorities (their own children), their words were simultaneously over-
populated with the primacy of the needs of others within this community.
Middle-class parents at Highland seemed positioned somewhere be-
tween their world of self-interest and individualism (Brantlinger, 2003),
and yet their words and actions simultaneously maintained a foothold in
the worlds of others. Middle-class European Americans (with emphasis
upon independence) have been characterized in much research as intrin-
sically motivated toward actions that are self-enhancing (Hernandez and
Iyengar, 2001), whereas other groups are often characterized as collec-
tivist in action and intention, drawing motivation from activity that ben-
efits the group (Hernandez and Iyengar, 2001; Trumbell et al., 2001;
Valdes, 1996). At Highland, however, the self-enhancing activity of vol-
unteering among many of the middle class generated action beyond a
simple Judeo-Christian do-good mentality (Gans, 1978). The ethos cap-
tured here had the potential to increase understanding of the relations
between those within the full community; moreover, many dealings mat-
tered in the achievement of all children.
Drawing again upon Bakhtin to analyze the activity of Highland vol-
unteers, I found that the discourse and activity of this middle-class group
could not be split from the production of the culture within this school
with its focus upon community. Although parent volunteers worked to
support their own, they simultaneously identified a set of children and
parents whom they perceived to be beneficiaries of their work. Parent
volunteers were unified as part of the same whole to which children other
than their own belonged; thus, all volunteers put the concerns they had as
parents of their own child squarely next to the needs of the other. Each of
these mothers discerned what she perceived to be the rewards of her
labor, and each also neatly articulated community understandings in
ways new and different from what the literature commonly portrays as
those of the middle-class parent (Brantlinger, 2003; Graue and Smith,
1996; Lareau, 1989). Despite this evidence of volunteerism as a two-
sided act, at times, division within the community prevailed. Some still
wanted their own children to stay firmly on their own side of the fence.
Boundaries boldly reasserted themselves; the lines of demarcation put
neither the middle class nor the lower economic class in a favorable light.
220 Janice Kroeger
The wealthier European American mothers were wary of what they

didnt know but expected from the poorer parts of the schools commu-
nities. One parents discussion, depending upon interpretation, conveyed
attitudes toward a child from a low-income family that were either less
than flattering, reflective of differences in cultural value, or based on
facts. The mother said, I dont know her family, but I dont think that
anyone would help her make a costume. We are going to make one for
Chantilia, too, and they will each have one (May 17, 2001, p. 35).
Furthering this line of contrasting evidence, Gravenswood mothers
supported regular play dates between their children and those from the
Waterside International or South Green Street neighborhoods, believing
that play dates were beneficial for all children. Cross-neighborhood visits
would not, however, be balanced. One mother commented: There are
kids that we have had over for play dates because they havent had too
many. It is a nice thing for them even though I know it wont be recipro-
cated because it is not a home that I feel comfortable sending [my child]
to. And those are the kinds of kids that you say, Oh, [my child] has out-
grown this, and we have these extra markers. Would you like these?
They are kids that might not have that at home.
Admitting her own bias, this mother did not allow her own child to
visit the less affluent neighborhoods. Her summationThose children
might not actually have had legitimate opportunitiesprovided the im-
petus to support the children of others (on her own turf) but didnt allow
her (or her child) an option to visit foreign territory. Limiting any oppor-
tunity to learn about a neighborhood, family, or lifestyle differing from
her own, she also prevented the much-needed self-correction of negative
perceptions. The Gravenswood mothers assessments of needs and risks
in the South Green Street and Waterside neighborhoods remain open.
While the children of Highland could experience cross-neighborhood al-
liances in the classroom, they were less likely to do so outside of school
unless parents desires concurred. The egalitarian social environment,
which had been so carefully contrived in the desegregated, restructured
school, was undone through parents social selection for children.
Persistent Social Class Factors

and the Caveats of Volunteerism
Parent networks, financial security, and education mattered in volun-
teerism. Parents secured after-school care or worked late to compensate
for time in Spencers room. Parents traded times, and their professional
careers and part-time work schedules allowed them each some degree of
flexibility. Predictably, all of Spencers parent volunteers were European
American. No parent of color, limited English proficiency, working class,
or lower income worked with the focal classroom in this way. Bills
mother, Elizabeth, wanted to volunteer but could not get time off from
her factory shift to work in the classroom (May 30, p. 8). Work obliga-
tions precluded Raphaels mother from this type of volunteering as well;
his grandmother volunteered instead, traveling once a week from out of
town. Chantilias mother volunteered once but did not return. Jimmys
father participated in other ways with the assistance of Building Resource
Instructional Support. Weiyis parents worked long hours and believed it
was important to learn about Weiyi, not about the classroom or the
school through involvement (M. Cheng, trans., Su, November 17, 2000).
While volunteering produced and reinforced networks of association
between Village Grove and Gravenswood, the classroom volunteer activ-
ity offered little room for bringing Highland, South Green Street, and
Waterside families into the daily life of the classroom.
Levels of education may have excluded some from participating as
Spencer requested. Parents from the South Green Street area or from the
Waterside International Pavilion, many of whom were refugee and immi-
grant families or from countries with lower educational achievement,
might not have experienced the volunteering event in a positive way. In
fact, volunteering in this way would have called attention to what they
lacked (Vue, March 28, 2001). Some first-generation refugees from Laos
and Thailand typically had four to seven years of schooling as was the
case with Jimmys parents but not Bills, his father and mother having
both a high school education and some college. Many newcomers did not
speak the language of the school.
Volunteering in Spencers room followed a widely used model of par-
ticipation recommended by school policy makers, but the experience pre-
sented many with challenges. Taking into account the nature of Spencers
classroom and an analysis of which parents did or did not participate, the
researcher concluded that the experience of volunteering was as over-
whelming and disengaging for some as it was rewarding and fruitful for
others. A parent most at a loss in the role Spencer created was one with
limited education of English language.
Middle-Class Parents and the Highland

ParentTeacher Organization
The Parent Teacher Organization, which structured ten of twenty-five
opportunities, exerted a powerful force upon parent involvement at
Highland School, contrasting with Spencers classroom or the improve-
ment and restructuring initiatives. PTO, largely uncontrolled by school
staff, generated activities equal to either Spencers efforts in the classroom
and Highlands paid staff. The PTO board held meetings, raised money,
222 Janice Kroeger
elicited the support of other parents, and constructed academic and social
opportunities for children and parents (see table 3).
Majority dominance prevailed in this venue. Active PTO board mem-
bers were mostly white middle-class parents; the two parents in Spencers
classroom who were members of the board, Paige (treasurer) and Laurel
(PATHWAYS committee member), were both Gravenswood mothers.
Many others in Spencers classroom attended PTO events; however, few
parents came from Waterside or from South Green Street. Of all of the par-
ents from Spencers classroom attending or using the events provided by the
PTO, most were from the wealthier neighborhoods. Of the four students in
the focal classroom whose parents were of color, few attended PTO events.
The Persistent Social-Class Features

and the Caveats of PTO Activity
School restructuring altered the quality and quantity of teacherparent
interactions; simultaneously, Danielle Dumas, the school principal,
played an important role in challenging the active middle-class families
on the PTO board. Majority class, race, and language shaped attendance
at all PTO events, and certainly, board membership paralleled the domi-
nant social-class standing at Highland.
Board members contemplated the absence of parents of color and fea-
tured their work as a way to make Highland School a successful commu-
nity. Though members recognized unequal dynamics and professed a
desire to integrate communities, they did not recognize their own place in
constructing power relations. Paige, Catherines mother, commented on
her own experiences with the dynamics of power in the organization: We
have been trying to get more minority involvement on the board, but PTO
is time-consuming. To be quite frank, there are a lot of really smart people
on the board and smart parents in this district, and it can be quite intimi-
dating. In my situation as treasurer, Ive had people say, Well, how can
this figure be this? Last month it was this. I said, This is a volunteer job!
Do not call me to the carpet in front of 20 people! You have to say to
yourself, There are people like this in all walks of life. . . . It is intimidat-
ing for people at all levels (Cartier, May 30, 2001, p. 15).
Paiges evolving role in the community was typical of the ways in
which this network of parents inducted others into the traditional events
and activities of the school. She explained how she began: I went to func-
tions, and I did these things; but I didnt really know or have any idea
what they did or how they spent their money or how they got all this
money. So I talked to a friend, asked her what it was like, what it entailed,
and realized that is something I can do (Cartier, May 30, 2001, p. 12).
As PTO treasurer during her daughters years in Spencers room,

Paige balanced accounts, kept track of outstanding debts and fund-rais-
ing figures, located banking services with the most cost-efficient checking
account, and invested Highland PTO funds. Her activity was another ex-
ample of the ways in which Highlands middle class distributed some
peoples skills and maintained the cultural place of others.
The Principals Role; Voicing the Rights of

Others and Creating Tensions
Dumas raised concerns of parents whose presence was implicit in the
words of the schools agenda to alter the quality and quantity of parent
interactions (Confidential, Highland Principal, 1998). Dumass perspec-
tive as a school leader aligned clearly with the perspective of ethnic and
linguistic minority families. Dumas characterized the PTO support for the
school as both a struggle and a benefit: Overtly, I think the PTO has
been extremely helpful with funding. They are extremely conscientious in
terms of trying to help, but it is icing, not down to the cake. We have a lot
of well meaning parents, who work very hard for the PTO and really
reach out (Dumas, June 11, 2001, p. 9).
Dumas saw the board come a short way during her four-year admin-
istration; nevertheless, she saw that the PTO had much work to do. As a
school leader she played a role in shifting the PTOs worldview. She
stated: It is more than just paying for baby-sitting and transportation
and making phone calls. It is facing your own racism; it is putting your-
self in uncomfortable positions, . . . reaching out to African-American
parents and inviting them to the PTO meeting at this school, but they
know it is going to be all-white people from the Gravenswood neighbor-
hood (June 11, 2001, p. 10).
Dumas articulated an unlikely but more comfortable arrangement for
many black parents, suggesting a strategy to attract African-American
members of the community to the PTO board. She stated, Well bring our
whole meeting to South Green Street Community Center, and you bring six
of your African-American friends with you to make yourself feel comfort-
able. [That] would make the PTO feel uncomfortable. Dumas explained
that the PTO board would have little understanding of how to involve
black, Latino, or Hmong parents on the board because they had no under-
standing of exclusion: None of them are overtly racist. That isnt the case
with our PTO, but [it is a question of] how uncomfortable you are willing
to make yourself to make someone else comfortable. It isnt about money.
It is about having some sort of understanding of how you would feel if it
were you were a minority parent (June 11, 2001, p. 10).
224 Janice Kroeger
Dumas saw progress in the way in which PTO handled issues of ac-
cess to both places and information for some parents. She saw changes
in delegation of responsibility among parents to facilitate communication
with Latino American and Hmong American parents. She stated: At
first, it was the principals responsibility to let them know that something
needed to be done. Now every time they print something that it is going
home in English, [they say] What can we do about that? Every time we
have a meeting, [they ask] How do we advertise to the parents that we
will have a Building Resource Instructional Support person there to trans-
late? That we will pay for cabs if there are transportation problems? Or
[they ask] whether people are willing to pick up other people (June 11,
2001, p. 11).
Dumas saw the PTO shift its practices to create a slightly more ac-
cessible atmosphere for parents. Her descriptions of the state of the PTO
contrasted with her memory of it in earlier years: They are taking more
ownership for the more superficial stuff, but youve got to start some-
where. They are looking around their group instead of looking at me for
answers (Dumas, June 11, 2001, p. 10).
Despite what Dumas saw as progress, her words convey criticism, an
assessment that PTOs involvement within the larger structure of High-
land School had an overarching position that failed to address the many
problems, therefore maintaining the position of the powerful; the admin-
istration also benefited from PTO work. The same parents who were
helpful and generous with time and resources, had as much or more to
learn as a professional staff did. Dumas perceived her role as one of chal-
lenge to the PTO board. Her conversation implies an attempt to shift the
thinking and behavior of the PTO, but the board controlled activities as
well as important funds. She explained: The budget PTO generates cer-
tainly isnt going to make our poverty-stricken parents at this school
who happen to be largely minority parentsmore comfortable, especially
when they look and see that the PTO has more money to use than their
household income. That is the reality of what they are able to raise as an
organization, and we need to appreciate and not condemn (June 11,
2001, p. 12).
The PTO provided the schools with powerful financial backing
through fundraising; however, looking closer at events created by PTO
activity prompts further scrutiny.
Contentiousness of PTO Activity

Much of what the PTO did can be understood as beneficial, neutral, or
counterproductive to the Waterside Community and South Green Street
neighborhoods. Whether PTO board activity is regarded as helpful or
hurtful to Highland as a whole depends on the ways in which events and

experiences are analyzed. The Highland PTO structured opportunities
that produced participation among groups; events themselves were more
or less efficacious for particular children and families in specific ways.
Below the surface, events reveal practices that perpetuated exclusionary
behavior and that prevented many children and families from academic
or social benefit because of culture-specific types of knowledge (Delgado-
Gaitan, 1991).
The PTO voiced the desire to appeal to and support all families, yet
their adaptations, such as providing transportation, securing interpreta-
tion skills, or supplying funds to purchase items that parents typically
bought, werent the only things that mattered. These modifications bene-
fited some; however, the types of events offered and developed by the
PTO during the year were comfortable, natural, and enjoyable only to
some families in the school. This is implicit in Dumass comments and
manifested in the overall low turnout from the Waterside International
and South Park Street areas.
Less than fully described but clearly implied by the principals dis-
cussion is the culture-specific knowledge that parents needed in order to
be part of the involved and visible community. It is no surprise that Wa-
terside International Pavilion and South Green Street families infre-
quently attended many of the Highland activities. The sock hop, for
example, was a pleasant experience for parents who enjoyed American
pop music, dance, and customs; but it likely alienated many African-
Americans, Mexican Americans, and certainly Hmong Americans, for
whom their own music and dance represents identity.
Many events, such as the Authors Tea and Book fairs contained ped-
agogically meaningful elements for children regardless of a parents par-
ticipation. In particular, these two events, with their focus on reading and
writing, could be very helpful to children regardless of parents atten-
dance or language and educational backgrounds. In these instances, chil-
dren experienced literacy and academic support through reading, writing,
book purchases, and adult writing and story-telling interactions. PTO or-
ganizers took into account financial considerations, purchasing vouchers
for children whose parents could not afford to buy them. This was to the
credit of PTO event developers, but both literacy events had strong ele-
ments of linguistic and academic cultural capital embedded in their de-
livery. Persons who could not read English, for example, or write
commentaries on childrens work during the Authors Tea, would likely
feel uncomfortable. An event designed to celebrate childrens writing
ironically exposed parents lack of literacy in the presence of others.
By contrast, an activity like Star Math was academic in nature but
more fully dependent upon a parents skill and activity at home; therefore,
226 Janice Kroeger
it was inaccessible to many without the education, time, or desire. Star

Math and after-school foreign language classes for children of necessity in-
cluded elements of academic and economic cultural capital in order for
them to be meaningful. Star Math required a parent to have at least a
basic math education, English reading skills, and after-school time suffi-
cient to facilitate the lessons.
After-school foreign-language classes were tuition based and in-
cluded only Western languages. Organizers prioritized German, Spanish,
and French, but members of the parent and child communities spoke
Hmong, Spanish, and a handful of Asian languages (Japanese, Chinese,
and Korean). Spencers student Bill noticed that the languages in the en-
tire parent (and child) community were not considered in the event plan-
ning, commenting, Do they have Hmong? I speak Hmong really good
(classroom memo, winter 2001). Carnival, one of the few events in which
parent communities merged, nevertheless relegated Mexican American
and Hmong American parents to food donors and preparers, replicating
class positions even within an event that many considered successful.
When close event analyses are juxtaposed against spoken desires, we
see clearly that well-meaning individuals perpetuate hegemonic structures
by capitalizing upon and valuing their own capacities. Looking deeply
raises additional questions about the implicit purposes and social func-
tions of large organizations like the PTO, which control experiences for
children and families, simultaneously creating moments of possibility for
some, yet largely reaffirming the positions of dominant classes of people.
During the study year the PTO Board approved $21,000 worth of
line-item and one-time grant requests calculated from end-of-year grants
and items reported in PTO minutes (September 2000 to May 2001). The
organization purchased science materials, emotional literacy posters,
Hmong cultural materials, maps, ESL items, and many other basic sup-
plies throughout the school year. Of the total amount generated, most
was devoted to the special needs of low-income and ESL students.
The treasurer commented on the tremendous fund-raising capacity of
the PTO, which implicated a series of complex commitments, all of which
supported communities of the school. An allocation of approximately
$5,000 went to the Title I parent empowerment groups for families of
color. Paige, one of the mothers, stated:
We voted on grants. And the number one priority grant was for the
minority parent empowerment groups. Most grants have to do with
multicultural education materials. We granted money . . . for Hmong
posters. Gravenswood School Plus is a program that the Gravenswood
principal has at her school for kids in an after-school and homework
group . . . and School Plus, a series of scholarships to support students
in the PTO-sponsored foreign language classes who could not pay the
$50.00 to participate. It is for school improvement and community

building and open-arms-for-all, a necessary after-school learning
opportunity. (May 30, 2001, p. 16)
Much of the funding covered space and materials, and the treasurers
comments confirmed that funding provided for early literacy materials,
not all print media or in English. Trade books supported bilingual learn-
ers, and importantly, all purchases supported early readers. She said,
We bought some Spanish trade books for Gravenswood, multilingual
books on tape. This is the second year that they have granted SPARK
bookbags, $1,300.00 for that.
The HighlandGravenswood PTO responded partially to the larger
learning community, by providing grants ultimately sought by staff. It
was up to the teachers to use the moneys well and to establish an appro-
priate curriculum. In this instance, the PTOs capacity for funding was
tremendous, and their time and allocation of materials indeed supported
teachers on behalf of learners. Paige continued: The majority of the
15 grants addressed the needs of all communities at Highland. Paiges
comment partially contradicts the notion that the PTO wasnt stepping
up to the challenge of the larger Highland school community. Seeing the
PTOs goals in tandem with the larger vision of this integrated learning
community, she stated, I like to say that the PTO shares the same goals
as the teacher and principals at Highland and Gravenswood do.
Like volunteerism, PTO work defies analysis solely as a funding
mechanism or solely as a mechanism whereby groups of parents from
Gravenswood, Village Grove, and Highland neighborhoods organized
activities to benefit themselves and only their own European American
middle-class children. Any close analysis of events, similar to parent vol-
unteerism in classrooms, reveal practices that both perpetuate the status
quo and alter opportunities for all children and families.
Implications and Conclusions Stemming

from Social Heteroglossia and Parent Involvement
Homeschool relations emerge and develop in a complex web of commu-
nity networks that structured possibilities for particular people, revealing
homeschool relations as more complex than simple. This analysis of par-
ent involvement shows the strong place of middle-class parents in an
evolving ecology, thus fostering a realm of potential and contention for
everyone. These findings, although supplemental to the existing and grow-
ing body of critical literature about middle-class parents (Brantlinger,
2003; Delgado-Gaitan, 1991; Graue, 1993; Lareau and Horvat, 1999;
Valdes, 1996), do not endorse the abdication of responsibility by teachers
228 Janice Kroeger
and appropriation by parents, but instead focus more clearly upon parent
leadership networks and upon the school staffs responsibility to analyze
more carefully power relations within schools.
A simplistic analysis of this data would place middle-class parents
fully in the seat of establishing and perpetuating hegemonic forms of
schooling, and yet they do not fully do so. At times and in places, impor-
tant cross-racial and social-class relations are established. These findings
call attention to the oddly interdependent power plays between adminis-
trators, teachers, and various parents social groups, which recapitulated
elements of positive and negative social practice.
A base of educational decision making was formed at Highland, and
it had the power to move dominion more clearly underground or to
solidly situate the activity of influential middle-class families within the
realm of the powerful, affecting the lives of all of the parents and children
in significant ways. These data show extensive interpretation of social
and discursive data, fluidly constructing school participation, thus estab-
lishing a school climate of a particular type.
The critical role of dominants, illustrated in enactments of middle-class
European American models of involvement, show a surface valuing of di-
versity and slight adjustments in delivery and form of school activities; yet
these partial adaptations are not nearly enough to benefit its range of stu-
dents. Highland appears at once to be a parent community in which people
were in a much-needed process of grappling with the requirements of others
and simultaneously supporting community within an ethos of responsibility.
Aspects of what middle-class parents do also reestablishes their own place.
Active European American parents from the Gravenswood, Highland, and
Village Grove neighborhoods invested in what they saw as the schools
needs through volunteerism and funding; yet they have also reasserted as-
pects of their cultural dominance through events and activities for families,
which in many ways privileged their own. Home and school involvement
at Highland as a heteroglossic endeavor simultaneously showed change and
maintenance of the status quo with cultural domination gaining ground. In-
stances of deep boundary spanning among several middle-class parents
(as in Mariettas translation support and the work of Laurel in PATH-
WAYS) occurred (Lawson, 2003), showing clearly that the roles people play
are not entirely dictated by social structure but by personal agency (Holland
et al., 1998). These middle-class mothers, although individually driven, took
action of collective merit.
Perhaps a combination of restructuring, teacher practices, and parent
activities worked in concert to shift the conversation about the needs of
learners, thus creating an emerging ethos of community. A restructured
school environment with this determined cadre of parent volunteers
changed the individualistic tenor of Anglo-American parents activity. Find-
ings suggest that the individualistic model of relational practice, in which

Anglo-American parents work to benefit their own children, may have a po-
tential to shift to one in which Anglo parents support communities of chil-
dren as classroom volunteers provide instructional and social support to a
fuller range of learning community members. Nonetheless, this ethos of re-
sponsibility downplayed any functional focus to question the larger forces
at work in such an activity.
Rather than simply add to the literature of awareness about the
power of the active middle class, I have highlighted the key features,
which counteract and contest the notion that middle-class activity and
discourse is solely individualistic and potentially counterproductive to the
success of children from other families. The dominant activity of mid-
dle-class participation in school in this study, while arguably assimila-
tional, may have potential that school and parent leaders can exploit for
different types of community good. Furthermore, I have argued that nor-
mative types of parent involvement, situating an entire community, must
be continuously challenged in order to meet the heteroglossic quality of
families in many of todays schools.
The concept of heteroglossia allows interpretations of relatedness of
groups within the school; in an attempt to be effective, people adjust and
change their ways of thinking, living, being, and doing relative to the de-
mands of the larger communities outside of the school. This chapter it-
self calls school leaders and teachers either to question more carefully
and to stop the beneficial but recapitulative activity of the middle class,
or to marshal their forces more powerfully to benefit schools in new and
different ways.
Notes
This work originally appeared in The Urban Review, 31 (130). Copyright,
Springer. With permission of Springer Science and Business Media.
1. All proper names in this account are pseudonyms.
2. The researcher transcribed all of the interviews that were generated from
English speakers.
3. The researcher wishes to thank the Spencer Foundation and the Netzer-
Wendt Scholarship Fund at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, which fi-
nanced the years of data collection and analysis of supporting research work with
Hmong and Mandarin informants.
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PART 3
AFTER CLASS
These complex discussions of class and how class works with and
against race and gender argue that we must keep working on the con-
ceptualization of class. What is to come after class as we have histori-
cally understood it? Ellen Brantlingers research has led her to conclude
that schools do the work of social class in separating and preparing peo-
ple for the stratification of the wider society. Her work leads her to
argue that both the winners and losers in hierarchical forms of social re-
lations are endemically linked to frustration, anger, and violence. She is
also clear that it is the middle class that needs to change its behavior if
we are reduce inequality.
Maike Philipsen takes this last argument a full step further. After
class, we must be clear that the issue of poverty does not belong to the
poor but rather to the non-poor. The non-poor derive disproportionate
benefit from a stratified economic system. While Philipsen sees a role for
educators in eradicating poverty she argues that direct economic changes
are more likely to reduce income inequality. Nevertheless, she argues con-
vincingly that academics themselves can play a more active role by nam-
ing who benefits including how we benefits ourselves.
One of the lessons of this volume is that class is contingent. Van
Dempsey illustrates this by illuminating how the class in rural, Ap-
palachia has a distinctive form. Youth are pushed out of home and re-
gion to take advantage of education while simultaneously pulled back
by local culture and families. His work shows us that intersectionality in-
volves more than race, class and gender. It also has a geography that will
need to be accounted for, after class.
Finally, George W. Noblit returns us to the distinction drawn in the
opening section, getting to class. The subjective and objective ways of get-
ting to class were distinctly drawn. After all the work on class this and
other volumes represent, Noblit argues that class is in danger of becoming
233
dclass unless it is reconstituted. He argues for instead of reducing all
forms of stratification to a class base that it may be better to reconstitute
class after race. This is to say that class may have to be thought of as main-
taining difference as well as a strategy to reduce inequality. After class, we
may have to think rather differently.
9
(RE)TURNING TO MARX TO UNDERSTAND
THE UNEXPECTED ANGER AMONG
WINNERS IN SCHOOLING
A CRITICAL SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY PERSPECTIVE
Ellen Brantlinger
After conducting interviews with high- and low-income youths in Hills-

dale, I concluded that the former were the clear winners in school and the
latter losers. All school participation and outcome measures indicated
this was the case (see table 1). In terms of reported grades, 24% of afflu-
ent adolescents received mostly As, 67% mostly Bs, and 9% Cs or
below. In contrast, no low-income student had mostly As, 13% had Bs,
38% had Cs, and almost 50% had Ds or Fs. Low-income students felt
that most of their teachers did not like or respect them, yet were effusive
in praising teachers they felt cared about them and who supported their
school careers. Affluent students took positive teacher attitudes and treat-
ment for granted and, to some extent, saw teachers as social inferiors.
Low-income students reported vastly higher rates of punished school in-
fractions (80% compared to 30% of high-income youths) and more neg-
ative punishment (48% sent to the principals office compared to 9% of
high-income students, and 30% suspended from school compared to the
case with high-income students where this did not occur). The most fre-
quent penalty for affluent students was teacher reprimandthey were
talked to; low-income students were yelled at. I was familiar with
poor childrens difficult school circumstances from teaching and field ex-
perience supervision. In the latter role, I clocked in 7,000 hours of obser-
vations in Hillsdale classrooms. I was aware of the fact that subordinate
235
236 Ellen Brantlinger
status was not benign: Failure becomes all the more aversive as society
requires individuals to spend more time in formal education (T. Thomp-
son, 1999, p. 3).
I interviewed low-income adolescents first and was saddened by their
unrelenting tales of failure, exclusion, and ostracism in schools. By the
time I interviewed high-income students, I was predisposed to see them as
villains who benefited from school at the expense of low-income youths
suffering. Sure enough, many affluent students came across as arrogant
elitistsfull of themselves and oblivious to, or dismissive of, difficulties
experienced by low-income students. Their irritating cultural and moral
deficit narratives about poor students and families matched those of mid-
dle-class mothers and teachers at higher income Hillsdale schools
(Brantlinger, 2003a). I initially was so put off by these adolescents as-
sumptions of superiority and expectation for privilege that I ignored their
hints at frustration about being unable to perform the ideal roles expected
of students of their social class. I failed to notice high achievers obsessive
worries about not meeting parents excessively high demands. I was not
particularly empathetic to their concerns about the precariousness of their
place in cliques and in prestigious activities. Nor did I think much about
the hard data that showed that affluent adolescents were almost as nega-
tive about school as their low-income counterparts (see table 2). Instead, I
saw high-income youths as winners who topped the school hierarchies
and who monopolized cultural and social capital. A closer look revealed
the undercurrent of dissatisfaction, even depression, which crackled the
Table 1
School Careers of High- and Low-Income Adolescents
Grade Level Status Low-Income (N 40) High-Income (N 34)

Above grade level 0 6 (18%)
On grade level 11 (28%) 28 (82%)
Retained one year 9 (23%) 0
Retained two years 6 (15%) 0
Class for mentally 3 (8%) 0
retarded
Class for emotionally 1 (3%) 0
handicapped
Class for learning 10 (25%) 2*
disabled
Resource services 4*(10%) 2*
Previously in special
education 4*(10%) 0
Referred but not placed 3*(8%) 0
Total special education 23 (57%) 2 (6%)
*Also included in first 3 categories (rows).
(Re)Turning to Marx to Understand 237
Table 2
High- and Low-Income Adolescents Attitudes toward School
Attitude toward Low Income High Income

School (N 40) (N 34)
Positive 15 (38%) 10 (30%)
Mixed 15 (38%) 18 (54%)
Negative 10 (25%) 6 (18%)
shining surface of apparent school success. In this chapter, I reinterpret the

results of my studies of adolescents and parents from a critical social sci-
ence perspective. First, I review the capitalistic nature of American society
and schools and the damaging conditions for subordinates in the system.
I also review liberal social psychology, contrasting it to a critical social
psychology perspective.
The Capitalist Nature of American Society

and Meritocratic Nature of Schools
Citizens dwell on defining America as a democracy, rarely noting the
powerful influence of capitalism. Yet, capitalism does reign and schools
mirror, or reproduce, its social order (Anyon, 1980, 1981; Bowles and
Gintis, 1976). Indeed, capitalist control is intensifying as government reg-
ulations of public life erode and are superseded by the entrepreneurship
of transglobal corporations. The key democratic ideals of liberty and
equality have always been in conflict in the United States, with their bal-
ance fluctuating somewhat according to the president or political party in
power. Equality portends a distributive justice in which resources and
status are to be fairly similar for all citizens. In contrast, liberty and the
pursuit of (individual) happiness set up a laissez-faire climate of competi-
tion for limited status and material resources. Competition and hierarchy
are integral to free markets in and out of school. Weighing in on the side
of liberty (liberalism or neoliberalism), capitalism validates peoples right
to carve out a good life for themselves, often to the detriment of others.
Lesser Schooling for Poor Children:

The Travesty of Meritocracy
Americans tend to believe that people enter occupational and educational
markets with equal chances to succeed. However, based on family in-
come, gender, race/ethnicity, and language use, students bring different
amounts of cultural and social capital to school. Pierre Bourdieu defines
capital as the capacity to exercise control over ones own future and that
of others as a form of power (Calhoun, LiPuma, and Postone, 1993,

p. 4). Additionally, school quality varies according to the economic capi-
tal, or financial status, of clientele (Burton, 1999; Kozol, 1991). Hence,
rather than being a leveler, education gives rise to, and perpetuates, in-
equalities. Given the ideal of equality, class-related distinctions call for an
explanation, which usually is that children differ in merit. Although
aware of inequities, Americans still like to believe that success in school
and markets depends on such personal traits as intelligence, stamina,
common sense, and a strong work ethic rather than social class and race
privilege. Few patrons question the win/lose aspects of meritocratic
schooling. Given that adults compete for lucrative jobs and career ad-
vancement, it seems natural and reasonable that children should compete
for valued school circumstances and outcomes, hence that some should
do better than others. Children are encouraged to develop skills that fur-
ther their self-interests (Labaree, 1997). The fact that students do not
have equal chances because playing fields are unequal is ignored as is the
emotional impact of having subordinate status. Most lay and professional
discourse centers on how to bring failing and at-risk students up to speed
so that they will not be a drain on society. Over the past several decades
student differentials have been named (note the proliferation of disabil-
ity and at-risk categories) and institutionalized through legislation.
Ethnographers describe how low-income students and students of color
are placed in stigmatizing school arrangements, receive primarily negative
feedback about schoolwork, and are subjected to discrimination by
teachers and schoolmates (Casella, 2001; Fine, 1991; Grant and Sleeter,
1996; MacLeod, 1987; McLaren, 1986; Noguera, 2003; Oakes, 1985;
Valenzuela, 2003; Weis, 1990; Wexler, 1992; Willis, 1977).
Americans continuously identify childrens low educational outcomes
as a problem. Touting the self-made man rationale, and alluding to
room at the reified top for all, politicians and educators stress that if low-
income students are to improve their life conditions, their academic
achievement must improve as well. Indeed, No Child Left Behind is based
on the premise that closing the educational achievement and attainment
gap between classes will reduce economic and social disparities. The mes-
sage is that it is up to poor children to replicate the achievement patterns
of their higher-income counterparts if they are to become as one with the
middle class. Prescribed remedies, however, inevitably solidify rather than
reduce disparities. Solutions that call for increasing the ranks of the edu-
cated class as a way to end poverty do not take into account (1) that peo-
ple with high school diplomas and even college degrees currently are
unemployed or underemployed, (2) that there are not enough professional
and other college attainment-based careers for all citizens, and (3) that
working-class labor is needed. Tightening school standards and demand-
ing higher test scores has negative repercussions, including social and emo-
tional stress for both teachers and students and narrowing the schools
focus to measurable skills and knowledge (Brown, 1995; Reay, 1998).
Identity Formation and Distinquishing

Relations under Capitalism
Identity is a psychological and a sociological concept; it involves the mean-
ing making of the psyche and the role-defining language and context of so-
cial relations. Hence, explicating the dynamics of identity formation is a
task for social psychologists. Identity combines the intimate or subjective
world (who one feels one is) with an objective face (how one appears to
others). Thus identity is never entirely under personal control. Dorothy
Holland, William Lachicotte, Debra Skinner, and Carole Cain (1998)
maintain: Persons capacities are implicated in reflexive mediation that
objectifies, monitors, and evaluates their own behavior (p. 19). They fur-
ther argue, socially constructed selves are subject to positioning by what-
ever powerful discourses they happen to encounter (p. 27). The objective
and subjective are intertwined to influence peoples performances of self:
People tell others who they are, but even more important, they tell them-
selves and then try to act as though they are who they say they are (p. 3).
In contrast to liberal social science theories that social life is neutral
(sane) and pathology is due to problems in socialization or bad seeds,
individual problems can be logically understood as endemic to everyday
interactional patterns in and among all classes under capitalism. George
W. Noblit and William T. Pink (1995) claim that whereas the old sociol-
ogy of education saw schooling as consensual and integrative, the new so-
ciology sees opposition, resistance, and conflict in schools. Bourdieu
(1984) argues that because social positions are relational and interdepen-
dent, the dominant class not only controls Others, but their power de-
pends on Others subordination. In meritocratic schooling, for example,
for certain children to be deemed superior, Others must be designated
inferior, dumb, and incompetent.
Scholars concur that bias and inferior schooling inflict damage on
students and interfere with positive identity formation (see Hudak, 2001;
Kihn, 2001). Arguing that labeling is about politics, power, and repre-
sentation, Glenn M. Hudak (2001) notes that it results in a false (im-
posed, rejected, inferior) self (identity) that is personally dislocating and
fragmenting (p. 21). Children fight the stigma and pain of the label in
order to feel real and alive, not isolated and alienated (p. 19). Re-
searching special needs girls at an inclusive British high school, Shereen
Benjamin (2002) shows the links between school micro-politics (power
relations produced in interpersonal interaction) and students identity
work. The girls had difficulty constructing positive identities out of the
dearth of constructive identity resources available to them at school. In
spite of substantial evidence that labeling and separating are harmful, vul-
nerable students continue to be dubbed with stigmatizing names and seg-
regated from mainstream schoolmates.
To explicate the grounding of distinguishing practices, Bourdieu de-
velops the idea of habitus, or the mutually constituting interaction of
structures, dispositions, and actions whereby social structures and em-
bodied (situated) knowledge of those structures produce enduring orien-
tations to action which, in turn, are constitutive of social structures
(Calhoun, LiPuma, and Postone, 1993, p. 4). Although the deterministic
character of class correspondence theory is criticized for being pessimistic
in denying a role for human agency, Bourdieu does take beliefs and in-
tentions, hence agency, into account. Agency is not free-floating, but con-
strained by socially received knowledge and social relations characteristic
in ones habitus or field. Field accounts for space of positions and peo-
ples position taking (p. 5), and results from the interplay of habitus
and access to cultural and economic capital. To translate Bourdieus con-
structs into what happens in schools, clearly, status positions relate to
students sociocultural knowledge and dispositions, cultural capital (or
lack thereof), and stratified school structure.
Other sociologists write about the connections between context and
identity. Erving Goffman (1959) observes that ordinary actors manage
and develop performances in relation to others in their social settings. For
Goffman (1967), subjectivity and identity are embedded in the material
features of contextually oriented scripts. Self-construction of identity is
mediated by the material world (Holstein and Gubrium, 2000). Examin-
ing (con)textually mediated communication, action, and social relations,
Dorothy Smith (1990) concludes that peoples lives are infused with the
process of inscription of cultural text (p. 209). According to Holland
and her colleagues (1998), cultural studies of the person is predicated
upon a continuing cultural production that is a co-development of identi-
ties, discourses, embodiments, and imagined worlds (p. vii). Peoples ac-
tions, then, are related to social positions in social worlds that are
structurally marked (p. 7). Jane A. Van Galen (2004) refers to an ab-
sence of explicit mention of social class in educational scholarship. My
studies reveal that although social class rarely is directly named, adoles-
cents and adults do speak of poverty, wealth, and poor and rich people.
More importantly, such student categories as smart and dumb, good and
bad, and those who care about learning are coded words understood
to be linked to student class affiliation. Like Van Galen, I conclude that
social class has major cultural significance in the construction of identity
and, in turn, influences social relations in school and in community life.
Agency, as identity, is situated within historically contingent, socially

enacted, culturally constructed worlds (fields or frames of social life). Af-
fluent people have the power to exercise agency in ways that enable them
to reach their goals, whereas low-income people are compelled to comply
with dominant class routines that rarely meet their needs or facilitate
their agendas. The agency of low-income adults and adolescents is mostly
suppressed, but surfaces in creative forms of resistance. Low-income stu-
dents comply minimally with school routines or are passive aggressive in
noncompliance (skipping school and classes, not participating in class,
and not doing schoolwork). Others resist through confrontation or acting
out. In Learning to Labor, Paul Willis (1977) illustrates how resistance
worsens students school circumstances and, ultimately, reduces their
chances for an improved adult life. At some historical periods, working
classes exercised more power and control over their lives. As labor unions
are quashed and working-class economic and political clout declines, the
collective and personal agency of working classes dissipates.
Even in the small town of Hillsdale, class-related distinctions in habi-
tus mean that children and adults can be identified by class-bound per-
sonae and behaviors. While constellations of class-tied responses were
evident in my interviews, consistent with Bourdieus ideas about improvi-
sation, each informants narrative was to some extent idiosyncratic. Rather
than being passive imitators of class-distinguishing ways of being, students
and parents are agents who are innovative in performing class roles. Bour-
dieu argues that individual and group ingenuity contributes to the ongoing
production and evolution of class characteristics. Yet, innovation is con-
fined within class parameters. It also seems that innovation is inherently
opportunistic. According to Gramscis (192935/1971) idea of hegemony,
because dominant groups intend to keep subordinates in relegated places
and counterresistance from them, they are constantly energized to come up
with new actions (improvisations) and original theories (ideologies) to sus-
tain and legitimate domination. Resistance, by definition, is reactive,
changing according to the domination patterns of elites.
Distortions in Perceptions
and Interpretations of Others
Structuralist sociology defines a social world prescribed by norms, scripts,
and socialized performances. Some scholars of this persuasion pay little at-
tention to the innovative actions and personal feelings of actors. At the
other end of the spectrum, with a decontextualized take on affect, psy-
chologists see such emotions as anger as erupting from within. Emotions
are seen to have an impact on the external world, but arise from internal
sources. Perhaps social scientists perceive emotions this way because they
often are men who hold unchallenged dominant positions. In the Victo-
rian period, womens emotional symptoms (e.g., hysteria) were attributed
to their fragile and unstable female physiology rather than a reaction to
being subordinate. Similarly, the white world tends to see aggression as es-
sential to blacks genetic makeup, whereas blacks understand rage as a
legitimate response to the continuing oppression of racism (Cose, 1993).
In mainstream education circles, subordinate students attitudes and be-
haviors are identified as problematic, but there is little recognition that
teachers and high-status students act in disrespectful and uncivil ways.
Following Maurice J. Elias (1989), I wrote about schools not being safe
havens or even neutral venues for low-income youths (Brantlinger, 1991).
Schools inflict symbolic violence (Block, 1997)a potent source of anger
and acting out. Rooted in frustration and depression, violence reveals the
deeply emotional dimensions of classroom life (Boler and Zembylas,
2002). The institutional reaction, however, is to identify misbehaviorsas
personal pathology and to label the culprits emotionally disturbed. Re-
gardless of being disruptive, resistance has been touted as an inevitable
and justified response to unfair treatment and hopeless situations (Ahier
and Beck, 2003; Dyson, 1993; Fleischer, 2001; MacLeod, 1987).
Powerful people attribute their material and status advantages to their
labors and talents. Correspondingly, they see Others low status as due to
their lesser aspirations and inferiority. Veiled by these distorted percep-
tions, social class privilege, in and out of school, goes mostly unnoticed.
Dominant groups rarely speak about how students relegated to second-
class status in class comprehensive schools or diminished education in
class-segregated schools suffer (Brantlinger, 1993, 2003a, 2003b). They
do not acknowledge obvious structural disparities in education or their
own monopoly of high-status positions and white/class privilege. Profes-
sional educators, who should have been exposed to pluralistic society and
diversity issues in teacher education or in-service courses, narrate stories
that stress deficient genes or cultural heritage causes for class distinctions
in school and society. The affluent believe that some people deliberately
choose to be poor and prefer the lifestyles to which they are condemned by
lack of funds (Bourdieu, 1984). That is, Bourgeois observers see self-
willed degradation in the slums (Stallybrass and White, 1986, p. 135).
In contrast to the invisibility of structural discrimination for affluent peo-
ple, low-income parents and adolescents see and resent class-biased prac-
tices (Brantlinger, 1985a, 1985b, 1985c, 1993; Demerath, 2003). At the
same time, illustrating the power of hegemonic discourse, to some extent
low-income people share the dominant class perspective that their class is
less smart, worthy, and respectable. Clearly, they internalize the distorted
messages produced and circulated by dominant classes. Hence, they vacil-
late between blaming the system and blaming themselves. Self-blame re-
sults in their not protesting entitlements given to higher classes.
Commonsense Constructions
of Anger and Violence as Residing Solely
in Subordinate Youths
In spite of the general sense that poverty is self-induced, middle-class peo-
ple appear to understand that denigration and subordination relate to
anger and violence. Although empathy is not their strong suit, perhaps
advantaged people can imagine how they would resent deprivation. Since
the publication of my adolescent research in The Politics of Social Class
in Secondary Schools (1993), a rash of shootings by white youths has oc-
curred at suburban schools. The media has repeatedly drawn attention to
the mystery of high suicide rates among students at elite universities and
secondary schools. Studies of affluent and middle-class youths reveal
their tendency to tease, bully, and reject each other and, especially, their
lower-status counterparts (Burkett, 2001; Eder, 1997; Merton, 1994).
Nevertheless, because success and wealth are associated with happiness,
evidence of anger, cruelty, and violence in affluent, successful classes are
counterintuitive. What cannot be explained by commonsense theories
often gets ignored.
I was particularly puzzled by one of the findings of my adolescent in-
terviews. Although both high- and low-income adolescents characterized
low-income students as troublemakers, actual incidents of cross-class vi-
olence were perpetrated by high-income youths. High- and low-income
informants described a frequent incidence in school hallways. High-in-
come students would push a peer into a low-income student. When the
low-income target reacted (usually verbally or with a threatening pos-
ture), the disruption brought teachers to the scene. The pusher pro-
claimed that the contact was accidental, the pushed peer would insist he
was innocent, and both charged that the threatened retaliation on the
part of the low-income student was not legitimate. Tense and upset by
the incidentand by general feelings of vulnerability and powerlessness
in the alienating school culturethe low-income youth would be bel-
ligerent toward all parties, hence was the one to be punished. Some af-
fluent youths saw these occurrences as humorous pranks. Low-income
adolescents were bitter about being singled out, slammed into, identified
as perpetrators, and getting in trouble for defending themselves by fight-
ing back. When I discussed these incidents with college students, many
recalled similar perceptions of who was violent and similar evidence of
who was cruel in their secondary schools. They, too, did not understand
why school winners would feel the urge to be mean to losers.
In my studies, high-income people conveyed that hostility and vio-
lence are endemic to the low-income Other. They conjectured that
angry and at-risk youths imitated adult antisocial behaviors. Low-
income adolescents and parents also tended to see negative attitudes,
anger, and violence as unique to their class. Reflecting Williss (1977)

British working-class lads, they were animated in enumerating the ways
in which they resisted domination. Except for passive aggression, how-
ever, what they detailed appeared to be fantasies of what they would like
to do to get back at others offenses. When asked to be specific about ac-
tual deeds, they admitted to not having engaged in cross-class aggression.
Their anger inevitably was aimed at high-status Others; their fights were
exclusively with their peers. Again, school-based cross-class attacks wit-
nessed by adolescents were committed solely by affluent students. Re-
gardless of consensus about who initiated the tussles, the reality did not
interrupt stereotypes regarding the social class of troublemakers. Fur-
thermore, the evidence of high-status youth infractions did not stick to
their personal imageaffluent adolescents were narrated as cooperative,
peaceful, and moral.
Theories about the Origins of Violence

In a middle school study, D. Eder, C. C. Evans, and S. Parker (1995) ob-
served a rigid ranking system acted out in official and unofficial spatial
segregation. High-status youth involvement in cross-group shunning and
teasing was ubiquitous. Students felt a high degree of insecurity about
their social standing. The authors conjecture that by joining the ridicule
of certain low-status students, high-income participants redirected their
insecurities outward and deflected potential negative attention from
themselves. Bystanders, who did not approve of peers cruelty to vulner-
able students, did not intervene to protect them. Eder and her colleagues
found that that causes considerable stress. A low-income girl assigned to
work in the lunchroom had such a strong fear of being mistreated that
she went to great lengths to avoid high-status students. Scapegoats were
special education students or students perceived as unattractive. Reputed
to be the most popular and powerful males in the school, athletes were
particularly prone to the use of degrading terms about homosexuality
and weak (feminine) behavior.
Eder and her colleagues hypothesize that affluent youths cruelty and
aggression comes from a desire to physically differentiate themselves from
those whom they feel embody negative characteristics. Worried about
their own place in valued groups, they validate their status as insiders by
casting Others as outsiders. Don Merton (1994) claims the heightening of
family and community pressures result in middle school adolescents need
to establish themselves as better than others, which they do by bullying
through negative epithets, put-downs, and physical aggression. Patrick M.
Brantlinger (1990) describes the psychological phenomenon of dominant
class groups projecting traits (stupidity, dirtiness, and violence) they do
not want applied to themselves onto Others. David Harvey (2001) refers
to the tendency to see evil in outsiders as a geographic imaginary that
flourishes when there is little contact and hence little knowledge about
Others. Dominant groups erect and preserve their own high status by cre-
ating rules by which outsiders behaviors are constituted as deviant
(Becker, 1963). Fitting in and belonging are important to adolescents, so
they attempt to appear as nonexceptional members of school groups
(Sacks, 1992). A. Michele Lease, Richard M. McFall, and Richard J.
Viken (2003) argue that wanting to be ordinary correlates with percep-
tions of Others as different, which, in turn, leads to the exclusion and os-
tracism of outsiders perceived as inferior. In a global study of school
violence, it was found that countries with the most stratified educational
systems had the highest rates of school violence (Akiba et al., 2002).
The human tendency to create outsiders is conjectured to stem from
deep psychological needs. The French linguist and psychoanalyst Julia Kris-
teva (1982) offers the concept of abjection to explain why apparently
healthy individuals participate in forms of group-based fear, hatred, and
oppression. People engage in intense self-creation work and defend their
identity boundaries by constructing exclusionary social codes. They create
a symbolic cultural order that assigns lesser identities to certain groups typ-
ically based on income-level, race/ethnic status, and religion. Individuals
cast impure and offensive nonidentity elements to the borders of psychic
as well as social structures. Within the daily operations of language and
culture, humans express loathing and disdain toward Others, producing a
regularity of rejection in the social order (see Smith and Danforth, 2000,
pp. 13839). George Lipsitz (1998) sees abjection in the possessive invest-
ment in whiteness. White [class] hegemony is maintained through the use
of externalizing and decentering strategies that focus exclusively on Others
(McLaren et al., 2001). Outward gaze serves to maintain privilege by ex-
ternalizing difference, defining difference as inferiority, and resisting self-
examination and critique. The practice of blaming the victim has long been
condemned; however, the practice still pervades the social sciences and is
reflected in the thinking of the lay public (Armstrong, 1993; Ryan, 1971;
Valencia, 1997; Wright, 1993). Notions about deficits figure in classifica-
tions of anger as deviance and notions of causality pinpoint anger as resid-
ing in childhood or family pathology (see DSM IV). The image of personal
and family dysfunction often is tacitly, if not explicitly, tied to minority
race and lower class. Theories grounded in liberal social psychology (social
science generally) assume that school and community life are neutral; hence
dysfunction is not inherent to settings or mainstream students, schools, and
families. These mainly psychoanalytic interpretations of identity formation
and intergroup tensions address group processes, but tend to ignore the
influence of the broader societal context.
The Puzzle of Violence among

Winners in the System
Due to the strength of commonsense constructions about who is hostile
and why, people are surprised about violence committed by individuals
from higher class backgrounds. After the first suburban school shooting
by white students from middle- and upper-class families, the media and
public expressed astonishment about the status of the perpetrators. How-
ever, after a few episodes at various suburban locations, people grew ac-
customed to the pattern of middle-class violence (Kimmel, 2003). Indeed,
witnessing the televised spectacle of Washington, DC, shootings, media
commentators as well as my acquaintances were surprised that the snipers
were black. Recent events informed the public about middle-class, white
perpetrators. Race and class stereotypes and commonsense notions that
being at the bottom of the economic or social ladder causes anger are re-
silient. Concerned about increasing threats of violence from various quar-
ters, Americans deal with school-based violence by investing in draconian
security systems and toughening suspension and expulsion policies
(Casella, 2001). In spite of suburban violence, the security measures and
zero tolerance policies that are the most inflexible and punitive are im-
posed almost exclusively on schools in low-income areas (Devine, 1996).
The high suicide rate among students enrolled at Ivy League univer-
sities and elite high schools surface in press coverage as a paradox that
cannot be explained by common theories about the origins and nature of
anger and depression. It is assumed that prosperity, prestige, and success
in competition make people happy. However, based on a study of busi-
ness students at the University of California, Berkeley, Jennifer Chatman
and Ariel Malka (2003) conclude: In a capitalistic society, people gener-
ally believe thatall other things being equalbeing rich is better. But
that is not what we found (p. 15). Just as I eventually came to realize
that successful adolescents in my town were unhappy in school, these re-
searchers found that wealthy people were not particularly content with
their lives. So, although Americans have come to associate sniper inci-
dents with white men and school violence with middle-class white boys,
apparently these perpetrators continue to seem like unexplainable class
and race aberrationscounterintuitive anomalies. The public cannot un-
derstand why middle-class persons (the winners in the system) are angry.
In this chapter, to explain the paradoxical discontent and aggres-
sion among the supposed winners in school and societal hierarchies, I
turn to ideas about the ubiquity of human stress under capitalism. In
particular, I draw from Philip Wexlers (1996) Critical Social Psychol-
ogy. I had followed Wexlers (1992) advice to study the psychodynamic
level of school relations for the perspectives of those involved. Yet,
because I was fixated on low-income students plight, I failed to notice

problematic aspects of affluent youths schooling. In this analysis, I re-
visit my interviews with 40 low-income and 34 high-income adolescents
(1993) as well as with 36 low-income parents (Brantlinger, 1985a,
1985b, 1985c) and with 20 affluent mothers (Brantlinger, 2003a) and
interpret the narratives by using a critical social psychology lens. I argue
that frustration, anger, and violence toward others and self, are en-
demic to winners and losers in the hierarchical forms of schooling that
exist under capitalism. First, I critique the flawed and biased theories
put forth by liberal social psychologists.
Abnormality and Deviance according

to Liberal Social Psychology
The liberal social psychology tradition attributes identity formation to a
socialization model that is undergirded by the assumption that immediate
family members and peers are key to identity formation. Ignoring capi-
talist context and social class relations, they define a separable core self
that develops through identification with, attachment to, and imitation
of, significant others. Given this framing of identity, the mainstream so-
cial psychology field sublimates and denies the presence and force of cul-
tural domination (Wexler, 1996). At the same time, by aggregating
individual deficiencies, scholars declare the existence of a set of undesir-
able traits in low-income children and families, which, in turn, are attrib-
uted to cultural patterns distinctive to their race or social class. Such
individualistic theories about personal deviance and abnormality shore
up ruling class ideology by blocking from view social structural tenden-
cies that are the identifiable source of personal conflict and suffering
(p. 14). Furthermore, the paradigm normalizes and legitimates everyday
cultural reifications [of class-distinctive attributes] (pp. 7980). Wexler
criticizes the fix-it shop of liberal society that sees problematic identity
as an idiosyncracy to be remedied on an individual basis by experts such
as themselves (p. 89). He also derides liberals inability to envision alter-
natives to market competition, noting that the social can no longer be
imagined as being anything different or other than the market itself
(p. xxiii). Hence, market relations become a transhistorical, unalterable,
constant fact of social life (p. xxv). Liberal social psychologists see mer-
itocratic schooling as neutral and normal. Dysfunctional school mecha-
nisms are not considered; defects exist in students. Although social
psychology purportedly pairs sociology and psychology, it dwells on indi-
vidual (i.e., student and family) psychological aspects of human actions
and not on macro-level, societal phenomena.
Moving from Liberal to Critical Social

Psychological Views of Position and Affect
The conceptualization that framed my early reports of social class dy-
namics came from Bourdieus (1977, 1984) clarification of habitus, cul-
tural capital, and field as well as from social class reproduction theories
of schooling. These concepts were useful in explaining the class-related
character of adolescent and adult identity formation and the institutional
processes that elevated and centered, or deflated and marginalized, stu-
dents from each social class. In terms of theory, I mainly followed the so-
ciological trend to focus on group processes. Bourdieu explains dominant
groups motivation to distinguish themselves from subordinates as well as
their actions for doing so. He does not address peoples personal reac-
tions to within-class competition or emotions related to being in subor-
dinate or dominant positions. Because an understanding of affect is
necessary to account for the paradox of discontent and violence in higher
classes, I turn to Wexlers application of Marxist concepts to link macro-
and micro-levels of human experience and to explicate the nature and
place of subjectivity in social life.
Wexler (1996) sees unsatisfactory identity and alienation as expected
products of capitalist social relations. Claiming that social class is a
salient collectivity and economic production a salient institutional site
of social relations (p. xx), Wexler studies peoples lived experience
through the sociopsychologic of capitalism (p. 78). He examines the
relational interactional processes which make possible the production
and reproduction of both the concrete individual and the structure of so-
cial relations (p. 73). Karl Marx theorized that capitalist social forma-
tion arises from the relational processes of alienation, commodification
(commodity fetishism), and exploitation of human labor power (see Bot-
tomore, 1956). Wexler generalizes these aspects of capitalist production
to a social psychology matrix for understanding human relations in
schools. Because of their importance, brief definitions of these concepts
are provided here.
Commodification or Commodity Fetishism

In modern capitalist societies this involves the construction of peoples
desires and felt needs around the material products of capitalism.
Fetishism attaches to the products of labor; as commodities are produced
[they affect] the social character of the labor that produces them (Marx,
1867, pp. 7778). Due to commodity fetishism, humans sense of agency
reverses: products and things are understood as the source, rather than
the effect, of human actions (Wexler, 1992, p. 85). Commodification also
converts humans into commodities whose value in the market is based on

their material resources and achievements (i.e., capital). Hence, self-value
is attained by accumulating institutional products, e.g., test scores,
grades, credentials, and professional status. People are constructed as de-
ficient when they lack these exchange values. While personal status and
power are elevated, personal control (agency) is diminished so that com-
modity accumulation is accompanied by a loss of imagination and capac-
ity for self-directive planning (p. 86). In commodified cultures humans
treat each other as objects so that, rather than being between people,
social relationships are between products or outcomes of peoples (stu-
dents school) labor. Material appearance is disconnected from concealed
personal realities (Bottomore, 1973, p. 87). For example, in my study,
high-income adolescents seemed intent on performing class-determined,
commodified roles; however, they generally hid their insecurities about
not fitting in or not succeeding academically from each other. In inter-
views, they first reeled off successes. As rapport and trust built, they con-
fessed to considerable insecurity and emotional stress about their status.
Exploitation
This occurs when subordinate classes do not get the full value of their
labor (surplus value goes to dominant classes), but also when social sta-
tus is not equal and when relations are based on hierarchies. Some have
more valued commodities (high test scores, good grades, participation
and leadership in prestigious activities, and high-status labels and class-
room placement) and others have less (low grades, exclusion, low-status
placements, and negative labels). Recall that Bourdieu (1984) claims that
social class distinctions are always interdependent: for some to have more
desired commodities and higher status, Others must necessarily have less.
Accumulation of capital by dominant classes (exploitation) is ob-
scured and routinized through ideology embedded in formal institutional
structures (e.g., comparative evaluation, classification and placement,
and legalized due process systems). The rationale for these systems are
that some children are slower academically or have defects that need re-
mediation. These rationale, or ideologies, naturalize and legitimate dis-
tinctions and disparities in school settings. Gramsci (192935/1971) and
J. B. Thompson (1984, 1990) theorize that, as meaning in the service of
power, ideologys role is to convince subordinates that status and mater-
ial disparities are justified. High-income people in my studies believed
that low-income students lesser achievement and low-status placement
resulted from their lesser intelligence or negative attitudes. In turn, these
were attributed to genetics or to parents inadequate child rearing prac-
tices. Echoes of these deficit narrative ideologies echoed in the responses
of low-income participants. Wexler sees exploitation as central to struc-

turing all social interaction. He contends that in exploitive situations the
self becomes a battleground between social production (of what domi-
nant groups reward) and individual ownership (agency, authentic iden-
tity, and agendas) (p. 87).
Alienation
According to Marxs definition, alienation occurs under capitalism when
a person, group, institution, or society becomes (remains) alien to (1) re-
sults or products of their own activity (and the activity itself), (2) the
natural environment, (3) other humans, and (4) human possibilities (Bot-
tomore, 1973, p. 9). Self-alienation is not one among various forms of
alienation, but is the essence and basic structure of alienation (p. 10). Bot-
tomore claims that Marx felt that recognition of self-alienation would
become an individuals or groups incentive to call for a revolutionary
changefor de-alienation. The cases of two high- and two low-income
participants that I summarize illustrate that these three dimensions of
capitalist relations affect participants of both classes, although in quite
distinctive ways.
Wexler (1996) argues that Marxs general tendency laws (commod-
ification, exploitation, and alienation) are mediations which apply to
all social relations in capitalism (p. 78). In his own ethnographic work
(Wexler, 1992) makes sense of disabling tendencies in contemporary
social life (p. 8) by deconstructing discourses which present them-
selves as explanatory in the everyday social interpretive practices of
ordinary people (p. xxi).
Referring to fundamental human drives for purposive labor and non-
alienated activity, Wexler (1996) maintains that feelings of alienation
under capitalism indicate psychological resistance to socially patterned
partialization and atrophy of human capacities (pp. 8283). Rather than
attributing group formation and relations to value similarities, mutual at-
traction, and complementary needs (as liberal social psychologists theo-
rize), Wexler claims collective grouping phenomena, forming cliques and
rejecting and ostracizing Others, are due to individuals efforts to over-
come paralyzing fragmentation and powerlessness brought about by the
alienating commodity fetishism and exploitation of capitalism. In my
studies, both high- and low-income adolescents alluded to idealized
others that were powerful, complete, and without personal flaws. As they
referred to these ideal classmates, or entertainers, Others were described
as inadequate objects. Wexler maintains that the assignment of these va-
lences corresponds to students socially patterned sense of personal lack
and self-devaluation that predict interpersonal attraction and aversion. It

is important to compare the dynamics of abjection and how identification
with certain ideal others and securing a place in a powerful collective are
desired ways to turn alienation into intimacy with others as well as with
self (p. 84). Thus, identity formation represents a personalized mode of
appropriation and accumulation (of commodities) (p. 90). Wexler argues
that schizophrenia (fragmented experience, (con)fusion of the imaginary
with the real, loss of boundary around ego or self, perception of self as
object, and sense of fragility or isolation) are quintessential self-products
of social relations in late capitalist commodity relations (p. 124). Com-
modity relations of fitting in and conforming to external standards hap-
pen among people of either class who have little control over their work
(p. 125). These same dynamics are integral to alienation. Relatedly, both
affluent and impoverished adolescents in my studies were upset about
what happened to them in school and were worried about their post-
school lives.
Questioning the Middle Class

as the Model for Child-Rearing
Educated, middle-class parents are continuously held up as parenting
models and are particularly praised for supporting their childrens edu-
cational achievement. However, the intense, even exploitive, nature of
their involvement is rarely addressed. Writing about college application,
after noting that universities have become a couple of clicks more se-
lective, Jennifer Jacobson (2003) conjectures that families who are
very successful in their own lives arent used to hearing no (p. A27).
She cites an admission officer as saying, parents today are used to being
heavily involved in the daily lives of their children, and have long ferried
them to and from ballet lessons, soccer practices, and many other en-
richment opportunities, and when its time to select a college they cant
turn it off (p. A27). This official claimed that one mother came on like
a scud missile, reminding him more of an agent than a parent, while
her daughter was sitting next to her looking like can I please be any-
where but here? (p. A28). Another admission officer says that part of
his job is to remind parents that the process needs to be focused on the
students interests and not the parents agenda (p. A28). This evidence
of parental pressure on gatekeepers may be the tip of the iceberg in terms
of how some push their children to perform idealized middle class roles
and unrealistically expect them to excel in a range of in- and out-of-
school activities. Such students may have few choices because their lives
are shaped by their parents ambitions.
Commodification, Exploitation,
and Alienation in Hillsdale
In a recent chapter I updated my portrayal of two adolescents, affluent
Marissa and low-income Travis (Brantlinger, 2003b). I highlight these
same two adolescents here, as well as a parent of each social class. Cather-
ine, Marissas mother, was interviewed for a study of affluent mothers
(Brantlinger, 2003a). Rhonda, Traviss neighbor in the Projects, was in-
terviewed in a study of low-income parents (Brantlinger, 1985a, 1985b,
1985c). Marissa was the epitome of a successful student and Catherine of
an involved parent. In terms of dissatisfaction with life circumstances,
Marissa was fairly representative of affluent adolescents. Regarding ex-
cessive concern about social and achievement status, Catherine typified af-
fluent mothers worries about their children attaining a secure high-status
place in a competitive world. Educational achievement and attainment not
only were status markers for external evaluation, but were the grounding
for positive identity for the educated professional class. Affluent mothers
revealed their compulsion to produce smart, attractive, popular, and well-
adjusted children. Travis was similar to other low-income youths in that
he had emotionally disengaged from school by middle school and as a
freshman in high school, he dropped out the day he turned sixteen.
Rhondas voice matched those voices of many low-income parents who
expressed anger at the negative school circumstances that existed for their
children and also for themselves in their earlier student days. They vacil-
lated between critical insight and self-blaming as they reiterated the ideol-
ogy of school as the site for social mobility.
Travis was a bright, athletic, and handsome teenager with a keen wit.
Teachers liked him and did not give up on encouraging him to improve his
schoolwork and to join athletic teams. In some ways they felt Travis had
class-exceptional talents and could succeed in school, so were perplexed
about why he did not make an effort and joined his less-competent peers
rejection of schooling. Travis did not identify with his teachers. Although
Travis announced that me and teachers didnt get along, when asked to
describe a favorite teacher, Travis responded without hesitation:
I loved Mr. E. [his fifth-grade teacher]; he was a real cool teacher. He

helped me a bunch of times when I did not understandhe cared about
me. Other teachers did not care. Theyd just get mad and say, Youll
flunk if you dont do your work. They didnt care what happened to
me. Wed argue a lot. I wouldnt understand something and theyd say,
Well I just showed you how to do it! And I liked Mr. F. [middle
school gym teacher and wrestling coach]. He was nice. All the kids liked
him and he liked us. We had fun in his class. Most teachers was snobby;
some was all right. If you didnt understand, they didnt treat you like a
piece of trash. Some teachers helped you if you had a problem. Most
didnt. They helped some kidstheir pets, but they didnt care about
most of us, didnt care about me, if I flunked or anything.
When asked if some students had an easier time in school, Traviss im-
mediate response was: Yeah, preppies, rich kids. They got away with
things. Teachers were hard on me and my friends. When asked about his
relations in high school, Travis said: I had some friendswe stuck to-
gether. The punks were smart aleckswe avoided them. They would start
fights and things like that. The preps ran the school. They would smart off
and call us grits [epithets for low-income people] and stuff like that. They
didnt bother me. I just kept away from them. I didnt care. Travis stressed
not caring, but his animated and emotional tone belied the validity of this
assertion. Before Travis dropped out of school, he had been suspended twice
in the fall for missing class and being late and had not successfully com-
pleted any freshman courses. Travis felt that his mother didnt want me to
quit, but said if thats what you want to do, then do it. He explained,
Shed rather see me quit than [be] in trouble. Besides, she let my brothers
drop out, so it wouldnt be fair [to] make me go. Anyway, she didnt finish
herself, and my dad dropped out when he was real little. When asked why
he dropped out, Travis reminisced: The dean was giving me a bunch of
trouble. She did that with all us boys. Shed hassle me about being late, miss-
ing schoolI was having problems with everything. Shed call my mom and
threaten her. When I quit going for a week after my dad died, she said shed
take me to court if I wasnt there every day. My mom said I did not have to
go until we got things straightened out. So, she suspended me. She said I
couldnt come back until I had a letter from the doctor or welfare. I never
liked school anyway. It was all right at Hillview [elementary] some of the
time, I guess. I did not like Downing [middle school] or high school. When
I was 16, I stopped going. I just got tired of going.
Astute about class politics, Travis used the interview to express re-
sentment about class disparities and to share his frustrations about the
hopelessness of achieving the American social mobility dream. Along
with other more self-confident low-income youths, Travis verbalized his
anger at his second-class status in schools. Less insightful peers revealed
their self-alienation by enumerating their inadequacies and feelings of in-
feriority. Commodified and exploited as losers, low-income youths were
alienated from the student role, school personnel, and schooling.
Rhonda grew up in the Projects on the Hill (an impoverished
area). When her second son was born, Rhonda moved to her own subsi-
dized apartment in the same complex where she had been raised and
where her mother continued to live. At the time Rhonda was interviewed,
her sons were in the seventh and fifth grades and her daughter was in the
second grade. Both sons had been retained a year in early elementary
school. Todd, the fifth grader, had attended a self-contained class for stu-
dents with mild mental handicaps for two years, although Rhonda was
not clear about his label. Rhonda resented that no one listened to her dur-
ing the case conference that resulted in Todds special education place-
ment; she admitted that she had not gone to subsequent conferences,
because it wouldnt make no difference anyhow. She recalled:
I tried to tell them about how upset he was about his daddy so he
could not stay still or pay attention. He wasnt like that when he was lit-
tle. He used to mind better. When Todd was in second and third grades,
he liked his teachers and he did okay then. Now, he didnt like Mrs. X,
he said she was mean and didnt help him. I know some of them teach-
ers wasnt fair. They have teachers pets or something. They favor people
that is more like in their type of society, their set-up. Like everybody has
their own little group, little society, people you run around with, people
you shouldnt talk about. Teachers favor ones more like themselves, or
people who they feel is respectable, or whatever you want to call it.
In terms of evaluating the cause of Todds problems, Rhonda alter-

nated between blaming herself (and/or the boys fathers), her sons, and
school personnel. She recalled, Todd had lots of trouble learning to
read, he was backward about his learning, just did not catch onand
I know how that feels; I was a little like that myself. Rhonda com-
plained: I know some of them teachers wasnt fair, they only want to
teach the smart onesthe ones who catch on fastthey dont bother
with those ones having a hard time. It was like that back when I was in
school; I know its like that now. Although her other son Dean had been
held back in kindergarten, Rhonda said, now hes making mostly Bs
and Cs in middle school and dont mind school so much right now.
Rhondas valuing of education surfaced as she described her daughters
school performance: Annette is real smart. Shes making all As. She
likes school. She loves her teacher and now she is even saying that
she wants to be a teacher when she gets big. You should hear her read.
She brings all these hard books home from school and instead of playing
outside or watching t.v., she just sits there reading out loud. She reads
better than Todd. She helps him when he lets her. I bet she even reads bet-
ter than Dean. Shes my smart one.
When asked about her own educational attainment and whether she
expected her children to graduate from high school, Rhonda elaborated:
I never went back after eighth grade. I was failing lots of classes and
I just got fed up with school. You know, in a sense, youre degraded by
people smarter than you. So, I really, actually know how Dean and
Todd feel because Ive experienced the same thing. And teachers like
certain kinds of kidstheyre talkative, which I wasnt. I was real shy
and stayed back. I felt really sort of degraded myself. Got discouraged. I
think my boys feel the same way. I hope they finish school, I really hope
they do, but I dont know, maybe they wont if things keep on going the
same way. Annette, now, shell finish, I know she will. She loves school.
Shes a smart one.
When asked about other peoples attitudes toward her neighborhood

schools, Rhonda explained, See, this part of town up here is run-down
and stuff and a lot of people dont like Hillview and Downing. They dont
like the Hill Schools cause theyre by the projects and stuff. In terms of
discrimination, Rhonda said: Well, you can see the difference between
them people that come by the moneytheyre treated different and thats
not right. I think kids should be treated equal, but theyre not. Theyre dif-
ferencing them. They done that way back even when I was in school.
When asked if she would prefer her children to go to the schools in
affluent neighborhoods that she categorized as real good schools
hotshot schools for rich kids, Rhonda pondered the question, then said:
I dont think theyd feel that easy over there. Well, I just think its more
well-to-do kids there, and whenever a child is poorwhen the others got
more things, better clothes, and stuff like that, then theyre going to make
fun to a certain extent. Around here its more people who are down to
our level.
Crossing over to the affluent eastside of Hillsdale, Marissa was ad-
mired by peers for having it all. Marissa got straight As in advanced
tracks, was a cheerleader, and in the competitive swing choir. In her in-
terview, after glibly detailing accomplishments as they might be listed on
a rsum for college admission, Marissa confessed to feeling insecure on
a number of fronts. Reassurance that sterling grades meant she was in-
telligent met with prompt denial. Marissa reiterated that her good grades
were the result of her own hard work as well as parental tutoring and in-
tervening with teachers on her behalf. She insisted that she did not catch
on easily or really understand most subjects. Claiming to be tone-
deaf with two left feet, Marissa surmised she made swing choir only be-
cause the director knew that she could afford the expensive costumes and
her mother would be helpful. After describing hanging out at the mall
and the lake with friends, Marissa launched into a vehement attack on
her peersthey were two-faced, dishonest, and disloyal. She complained
that her parents favored her brother. She charged that her parents only
cared about the impression she made on othersher popularity and
achievements. When alternative explanations were offered, Marissa in-
sisted that they did not really care about her. She cynically admitted to
being a teachers pet, but went on to attribute preferential treatment to
her brothers sterling reputation and her mothers school involvement.
All was not well in Marissas seemingly ideal world. Her airhead image
allowed her to mask her insecurities and anger. Marissa frantically
detailed problems in her life, conveying she had no one to trust to confide
her feelings to on a regular basis. Pittu Laungani (1999) claims that
individualism creates conditions that do not permit an easy sharing of
ones problems and worries with others (p. 95). According to Abraham
Maslow (1970) and Eric Erikson (1968), achieving a fulfilling identity is
difficult and stressful in an individualistic culture and in extreme cases
leads to an identity crisis. Marissa was a prime example of conflicted and
angry feelings about herself and her world.
Marissas mother, Catherine, grew up on the East Coast and moved
to Hillsdale when her husband became a college professor. She preferred
her own classic, rigorous private church-affiliated education to her
childrens public schools, although they had attended the best schools in
town. She and her husband selected their first home because it was in
the Kinder School zone. Kinder was an exclusive high-income elementary
school with no children on free or reduced lunch. They declined sending
their son to the gifted and talented program he qualified for because we
felt our own school, Kinder, was a better school, really, and so we did not
think it was worth it to bus him to the other side of town. They later
moved to a posh suburb because they could afford a large home in the
catchment zone of a new, more homogeneously high-income middle
school. Catherines version was: We heard from teachers that it had bet-
ter quality programs and was more academic. Catherine claimed that
her children had natural talent and were motivated to excel. Both were
in advanced placement sections in middle school and in high school hon-
ors classes, although Catherine admitted that Marissa had not always
done well on these tests; so she was grateful that principals were
responsive to our requests [for Marissa to be in these classes].
Catherine was proud that her children were active in extracurricular
activities. Marissa was more social than Christopher, who was more
of a scholar (like his dad), interested in science. Catherine was pleased
that Marissa was clothes conscious, in a prestigious clique, and engaged
in high-status activities. In contrast, after proudly describing Christo-
phers athletic prowess in tennis and track, she quickly returned to dis-
cussing his academic strengths: Chris is interested in the subject matter
he is studying and motivated to learn far beyond what he is given to

learn. He . . . will speak up for himself when he does not understand or
feels something like a grade is unfair. I often have to intervene with teach-
ers for Marissa. He cooperates with teachers and has a good attitude
about learning and is energetic and conscientious about his work.
Christopher has always . . . looked forward to going to school.
One complaint Catherine had about public education was that her
children occasionally had been in untracked classes, where they werent
pushed because teachers had to teach to the common denominator and
water down the curriculum. Catherine recalled: At times, with my
daughter, she was bothered by the school environment. In high school, in
a few classes, they both were with kids sometimes where many students
do not emphasize education and our kids had to deal with that, whereas
in my time, I studied in schools where all kids came from families that
stressed education and learning. They have had to associate with a wider
group of people in public schools than we did in private schools. I think
in some school environments here they stress mediocrity.
When specifically asked about whether she would support local so-
cial class desegregation, without hesitation Catherine replied: I prefer
them to attend schools in this area [affluent suburbs] because this is
where the better students are. She explained: Ideally, a public school
should have a mixture of socio-economic groups. The problem is when a
lot of low-income kids whose parents dont have much education come
into contact with high-income kids then there is not much stimulation for
good, um, they dont stimulate each other and they arent going to have
good programs. I know I am equating low-income with lack of interest in
education, but I think that is the way it is. My son says that grits [epithet
for low-income people] are not interested in schoolthats what he says
and he is tolerant of everybody.
When asked about the contact her children had with low-income
children, Catherine conjectured: I dont know how much contact they
have with lower-economic children. I doubt if they have any in most of
their classes. Then she quickly changed the subject.
What I have heard is that it is never the parents of students who

need help and have problems that come to meetings with teachers and
it is always parents of kids who are doing well in school or are from
high socioeconomic groups because they value education and, . . .
maybe do not feel intimidated. There are differences in abilities,
whether that is that low-income kids dont have abilities or whether it
is lack of encouragement of learning by the home, I dont know, but
I think low-income parents dont think learning is important. They
have to . . . think about jobs and making money. I admit, high-income
kids do have more educational options, but they are more interested
in those options too. Really, on a practical level, now, you would not
want your children to go to those schools [points to four low-income
schools on the list of local schools]. . . . I would want my kids to go to
a mixed school but one with an emphasis on, and value for, education
with a good faculty. My kids should be with kids who are motivated
and interested in learning.
Catherine had a masters degree in education and taught high school

for two years before she married and moved to Hillsdale. She had chosen
to stay home when her children were young, intending to go back to
work when they finished elementary school but got so involved with
volunteer work that I just never tried to find a job. Much of this work
had been at her childrens schools, in the library, and as room mother. Al-
though parental participation even for middle-class parents typically
drops at the secondary level, Catherine continued to be active in the high
school Parent Teacher Organization and in fund-raising to support for
their extra-curricular activities.
As might be noted in these interview summaries and quotations,
Catherine and Rhonda continuously referred to themselves and their
children as members of a social class. Similar to all affluent mothers
narratives, Catherine revealed assumptions about her classs intellectual
and moral superiority. She implied that because her children were acad-
emically advanced, they needed and were entitled to privileged condi-
tions and class-segregated school circumstances. In contrast, Rhonda
wavered between resentment about the social class biases that she knew
were quite profound and making comments that indicated that she had
internalized class-related messages about intellectual and competency in-
adequacies. Low-income peoples responses revealed a resignation to
class distinctions in schooling. Because school disparities match the
lesser conditions of all aspects of low-income life, they may seem natural
and normal. The inequities that shock and dismay middle-class people
who are concerned about educational equality, may be taken for granted
by those in subordinate positions. At least to a certain extent, poor par-
ents and adolescents seemed to buy into the dominant class ideology that
schools are fair meritocracies and that all students can do well if they are
smart, have the right attitude, and exert an effort. In spite of having con-
siderable insight into the nature and extent of social class bias, they still
attribute lesser status to their own, class-related inferior personal attrib-
utes rather than to structural factors that limit access to quality educa-
tion. To confirm the main point of this chapter, substantial evidence of
commodified, exploitive, and alienating circumstances riddled the nar-
ratives (see table 3).
Table 3
Impact of Capitalist Schooling on Adolescents and Parents
Participant Commodification Exploitation Alienation

Low-income socialized by possibility for school facilitates
adoles- schooling to acceptable status positive outcomes
cents accept inferiorized and self-image for affluent
identity and are sacrificed so students; low-
low-status affluent students income students
can be superior have no
constructive
place in school
Low-income learned through surplus labor little or no power
parents her own position (chronic to influence the
schooling to unemployment schooling of
accept low and low wages) offspring; negative
school status benefit capitalists; school experiences
and negative the children must and outcomes
outcomes for suffer second-rate result in not
offspring status so others seeing school as
can excel beneficial
Affluent pressured to must conform little sense of
adoles- be perfect in to class solidarity with
cents academics, expectations, her parents,
appearance, little room for siblings, or peers;
activities, and her feelings out-of-touch with
popularity and agendas own feelings
Affluent learned through excessively high by insisting on
mothers schooling that expectations perfect school
they were superior to raise perfect performance from
products who children; personal offspring she loses
must retain that needs sacrificed the intimacy she
status to facilitating might otherwise
childrens status have with them
Who Wins in School Hierarchies?

When examining the ubiquity of hierarchical schooling, it is easy to con-
clude that high-income students are winners and low-income students
losers. Certainly that has been the message of most of my own scholarly
work and that of critical theorists generally. It is undeniable that low-
income people have a much harder time and suffer most from life under
capitalism. Clearly, school inflicts the most damage on students who are
relegated to second-rate classes and who are bombarded with evidence
that they are losers. Wexler (1996) maintains: Even now, but in the neu-
tralized language of science [used by educational professionals, politi-
cians, and the general public] rather than one of morality and personality,
the bourgeois self ideal is used as a standard by which to inferiorize any
working-class subjectivity that resists its hegemony. The working class,
despite resistance, was subjectively colonized in schools and families. The
powerlessness dimension of commodity effects had historically had the
greatest impact on this class (pp. 12829).
As I reread the transcripts of interviews with affluent adolescents, I
began to realize that there were no true winners in the complex and trou-
bled dynamics of social class relations under capitalism in or out of school.
The convergence of evidence that winners in capitalist educational meri-
tocracies are not particularly happy, provided the incentive to seek out
theories that might explain this ironic paradox. And, as noted in my re-
view of Wexlers critical social psychological perspective, I found Marxs
ideas about capitalist exploitation to have sound explanatory value.
Low-income students clearly suffer from humiliating classroom
arrangements, negative evaluation of their work, and exclusion from
prestigious activities. Yet, low-income students and parents understand
these negative circumstances from their position/perspective as subordi-
nates. Many of the low-income adolescents who were interviewed had
the comfort of knowing that their parents empathized with their school
problems because of their own degrading experiences. Low-income ado-
lescents and parents could externalize blame for conditions and name
common enemies (snobby teachers, stuck-up preps, and useless home-
work). They felt within-class solidarity based on a shared sense of injus-
tice. In addition, they were able to invert the moral hierarchy by
espousing alternative values (it was important not to be snobby or think
you were better than others) and by validating their own interests (race
cars and heavy metal music) and personal styles. They conveyed that they
exercised certain choices that accounted for their low status in school (at-
tributing low grades to not caring about school and not trying). Just as
with Williss (1977) British working-class lads, some Hillsdale youths
claimed that they purposefully did not fit into the mainstream and inten-
tionally failed their courses. However, based on the emotional intensity
of these claims, this resistance bravado appeared to be a feigned position
and defensive fiction.
In contrast to low-income youths who could take school or leave it
because they knew their social class had been disenfranchised from the
benefits of school and society, school was an essential testing ground for
affluent adolescents. They were to follow in their parents footsteps and
to compete with their peers to attain a respectable level of middle-class

status. They felt pressured to pursue professional careers, whether or not
they found them interesting or believed they could reach their parents
goals. They aspired to being the brightest, most athletic, and most tal-
ented in the artsjust doing their best was not good enough. Some who
had not made it into the advanced course arrangements or did not get top
grades were dejected about being second rate. Those who excelled were
worried about maintaining their high status through each stage of their
education and life careers. Some, who would be considered exceptionally
high achievers by any standard, said they felt like imposters, attributing
success to intensive personal effort and family intervention rather than to
natural talent. A star athlete (described by others as a popular jock)
was upset that his best friend had received the most valuable player
award, which he felt he deserved. A junior, who played piano well
enough to accompany classmates vocal performances, compared herself
unfavorably to someone who had preceded her in this role and who had
been admitted to a prestigious music schoolshe was convinced that she
would not be admitted. If affluent students were not successful academi-
cally or were excluded from peer social life, they could not excuse them-
selves on the grounds of social class discrimination. They were personally
accountable. Combined with arrogance about their worth and entitle-
ments, signs of anger and/or depression about family life and social re-
lations in their neighborhood and school arose in affluent youths
narratives. Some seemed guarded in expressing their feelings. Others
openly confessed to considerable anxiety about meeting parents (and
their own) demands. Like their troubled low-income counterparts, they
used the interview opportunity to express intense feelings. Affluent ado-
lescents were to enact a commodified superior performance. Even when
they succeeded, some felt exploited and alienated.
The irony of the social reproduction milieu under capitalism is that
there are distinctions even within the dominant class that prevent their
solidarity and create friction within the collective of privileged students.
Competitive ranking dynamics do not sort zombies or mannequins but
real people with feelings and desires. Being at the top echelon does not
guarantee a happy, problem free life. The turmoil and angst of having to
be the best affect the psyche of students who should be content with their
winning status. The theme that she was to perform an idealized middle-
class role and could not be valued for herself dominated Marissas narra-
tives. As a commodity, albeit a valued one, Marissa was exploited and
alienated by the competitive/capitalist climate of school and home. At
twenty-five years of age, Marissa returned to her parents home because
her marriage was troubled and because she had quit a fairly lucrative job
after being passed over for a promotion. Catherine confided that Marissa
did not try hard enough to work things out, but also confided that her
son Chris had started and dropped out of two masters degree programs
and had a temporary job.
The smart and talented Travis had mostly disengaged from schooling
by the eighth grade. Learning that high school was not designed in his so-
cial class interests, Travis skipped as often as he could and had no regrets
about quitting. He experienced the chronic unemployment and underem-
ployment as had his parents and brothers. Hillsdale working-class jobs
had disappeared when factories relocated to Mexico and when part-time
service jobs relied on a ready pool of university students. About ten years
after I interviewed Travis, I read of his suicide in the local newspaper obit-
uary. He left three children to fend for themselves in a difficult low-income
world. Other interviewed adolescents were not as bitter as Marissa and
Travis; however, none glowed with contentment about their life in schools
and in the community. Few parents of either class were totally at ease and
satisfied with the present and future lives of their offspring.
A close look at the complex reality of the processes and products of
schools under capitalism reveals that nobody actually wins in terms of
having their intimate personal needs satisfied. Regarding the foundations
and functions of capitalist relations and meritocratic schooling, it is im-
portant think about the nature of human needs. Maslow (1970) presents
a continuum of essential human needs. The first two are biological (sus-
tenance and safety); the next three regard emotions and social life (need
to belong and feel loved, feel esteemed and respected, and reach poten-
tialself-actualization). Positive identity is linked to a sense of personal
wholeness embedded in feelings of solidarity with valued others. Drawing
from Erving Goffman (1959, 1967), Roy F. Baumeister (1996) claims the
desire to think well of oneself is a fundamental and pervasive motivation
of human psychological functioning. A cause of frustration and anger,
then, is having ones hoped for identity thwarted or satisfying personal
relations threatened. Consistent with Baumeisters and Maslows claims
about human needs, based on a meta-analysis of anthropological studies,
David E. Brown (1991) found that societal hierarchy that corresponds to
uneven distributions of social status and material resources was a human
universal. Brown also found that support for a social reciprocity morality
based on recognition of commonalities across social borders was simul-
taneously present.
Possibility of School and Societal Reorganization

Some might argue that the social and emotional climate in schools might
be improved without touching the societal context. In my years of field ex-
perience supervision, I observed caring and committed teachers. I also wit-
nessed whenever they conformed to the meritocratic standards of school-

ing: grading, ranking, and sorting students. Yet, focusing on the way in
which school organization affects teachers and students, Valerie E. Lee
(1995) observes that in Catholic schools, teachers and students use the
word community to describe their schools, whereas personal and commu-
nal dimensions had largely disappeared in public school life. She attributes
problems to bureaucratization and to efficient delivery of services, not to
the inherent anticommunal dynamics of capitalist relations. Lee claims
that two measures of communal organization are shared values and
shared activities among school community members. I would question
whether these might ever be realized in schools under capitalism. Perhaps
some vestiges of communal life remain in homogeneous private schools or
in rural schools less influenced by the rampant commodity fetishism of
capitalism with its exploitive and alienating impact on humans.
In contrast to Lees separation of school from its societal context,
Michael W. Apple (1995) insists that institutions and events of everyday
life be understood not in isolation from the relations of domination and
from exploitation of the larger society, but in a way that stresses inter-
connections, especially for the institutions, policies, and practices of for-
mal education. According to Apple, social class is an analytic construct,
but also a set of relations that exist outside our minds. For Apple, as for
Wexler, capitalism exists as a massive structuring force (p. 180). Cer-
tainly, the divisive strains of capitalism are strong in Hillsdale and in its
schools. What should be stressed as a concern for all Americans is that
school and societal inequalities (Perrucci and Wysong, 2003) threaten the
very democracy we hold so dear (Rorty, 1998; Young, 2000).
An unfortunate aspect of the American capitalist system and its mer-
itocratic schooling is that they depend on social hierarchy and on uneven
resource distributions of resources rather than on equality. If Bourdieu,
Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis, and other critical theorists are right,
schools in capitalist societies are bound to remain individualistic, com-
petitive hierarchies that privilege children from dominant families and
marginalize subordinate children. These divisive relations are bolstered
and mystified by social mobility and economic advancement ideologies
that have little to do with reality. Generations ago, George Counts (1932)
worried that stratifying interactions would be hard to change. It is clear
that transformative school reform is difficult precisely because schools
are controlled by the middle classes who think they benefit from stratifi-
cation and exclusion (Brantlinger, 2003a). My studies indicate that it is
time for these powerful people to look at the kind of schooling they have
created and think harder about the kind of schools they want for their
own and for other peoples children. Losers in the system are likely to be
too demoralized to imagine a more just world. Moreover, they lack the
power to engage in the collective action needed for monumental change.

To alter capitalism in society and meritocracy in schools, there would
have to be a profound change in Americans thinking. The only hopeful
aspect of the widening income gap and economic downturn of our trou-
bled country is that citizens consciousness may be raised enough to con-
sider alternatives that are more consistent with the distributive justice and
equality dimensions of democracy.
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10
THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY
SHIFTING ATTENTION TO THE NON-POOR
Maike Ingrid Philipsen
What Is Poverty?
Poverty may be the most basic and fundamental form of stratification that
exists in many societies. Of all the forms of stratification: race, ethnicity,
gender, disability, age, sexual orientation, religion, political affiliation, and
even physical attractiveness, class seems different. Class, and particularly
poverty, is more at the bottom of it all than the others. Social class de-
termines in a fundamental way a persons being, existence, and options
or lack thereof. To live at the extremes of social class is to live in poverty.
The central topic of this chapter is the issue of poverty. More precisely,
I will explore the question of what poverty means in relation to schooling
and in what we place our hope as we think about the educational institu-
tions at all levels, including higher education. I will speak to the role of the
non-poor in perpetuating poverty and the changes in perspective it may
take in order to do what, despite its feasibility, has not been done: to erad-
icate poverty once and for all. It is meant to spur reflections about the issue
of poverty and to encourage those participating in debates about its origins
and effects to investigate the roles of the non-poor in perpetuating a social
order that continues to be marred by poverty.
Poverty can be defined in many ways. Federal definitions express
poverty in terms of income per family unit. According to the Department
of Health and Human Services, for instance, a family unit of four whose
income does not exceed $18,850 annually can be defined as poor (De-
partment of Health and Human Services, 2004).
269
270 Maike Ingrid Philipsen
Despite such definitions, I still have difficulty imagining what it

means to live in poverty, although I have been poor for the duration of a
few years as a graduate student, married to another graduate student,
with one child, living on $13, 000 per year. That was poor but it was not
poverty. There were parents in the background who paid for medical ex-
penses and could be counted on in case of emergency; they provided a
safety net. One characteristic of poverty, however, is the absence of a
safety net, and, instead, the real possibility that one unfortunate event
such as an accident or medical emergency produces economically cata-
strophic consequences.
In addition, we poor graduate students were healthy in body and
spirit. We did not suffer from the effects of growing up poor: years of
malnutrition, physical or mental neglect, and abuse. Most importantly,
though, there was the prospect of getting out of poverty. Graduate school
does not last forever (though it may at times seem that way). In short, we
were allowed to view our state of affairs as temporary, as an investment,
perhaps even as a challenge: how far can you stretch that dollar? How
creative can you be trying to make ends meet? We were poor, in short,
but never experienced poverty.
According to the U.S. Census Bureaus statistics, poverty has been ris-
ing to 11.7 percent in 2001 from 11.3 percent the year before. This figure
translates into 32.9 million people who, in 2001, lived below the poverty
threshold, a figure 1.3 million higher than in the year 2000 (U.S. Census
Bureau, 2001, p.1). These statistics were published in the Richmond
Times Dispatch, alongside an article entitled, Espresso Tax Stirs Debate
in Seattle. The latter mentioned Starbucks coffee shops where coffee
costs about $11 per pound (Richmond Times Dispatch, 2002, A2).
Poverty and wealth exist side by side, figuratively, in this local newspaper
and literally, in our society and in other societies. This coexistence de-
serves attention. It is imperative, I argue in this chapter, for those of us
who belong to the so-called haves, to look at what poverty means, look-
ing not to satisfy curiosity but as a necessary step in the eradication of
poverty. What, then, does it mean to be poor?
A workshop organized by the United Methodist Church Southeastern
Jurisdictional Multi Cultural Convocation generated a report presented at
a Poverty Coalition conference in March 2003, defining poverty as,
. . . being just barely able to get by.
. . . the inability to live at a reasonably comfortable level due to eco-
nomic circumstances.
. . . living below what $7.00 per hour can provide in the U.S. No
basic sanitary provisions, not enough to exist on.
. . . hunger, substandard housing; health issues; job/jobless and the
dehumanization of the human being. (p. 104)
The Problem of Poverty 271
One of Jonathan Kozols important contributions more than a

decade ago consisted in his vivid descriptions of the ramifications of
poverty and, specifically, of poor schools, in his classic publication Sav-
age Inequalities (1991). More recently in Amazing Grace, Kozol once
again uses testimony, especially the voices and experiences of children, to
describe in shocking detail what poverty means (1995). Examples of life
in poverty abound in Amazing Grace, stories about drugs, prostitution,
children falling to their death in elevator shafts, pain, and neglect. The
city put a waste incinerator into Mott Haven which is, after all, a resi-
dential neighborhood, clearly an example of environmental classism.
Numerous other social critics have attempted to capture and com-
municate the experience of poverty, especially for children (Kotlowitz,
1992). In Nickel and Dimed, the journalist Barbara Ehrenreich tries on
the life of the working poor (Ehrenreich, 2001). For several months, she
struggles to get by on wages earned in one, at times two, low-paying jobs.
She works at a WalMart, for a maid service, and as a waitress. Granted,
she is not truly poor. She is a successful journalist in real life and knows
that she will return to that life once her stunt as a poor person is over.
Ironically, she also knows that at some point she will be able to collect
the royalties generated by her best-seller about the life of the poor.
Despite these obvious limitations, Ehrenreichs work conveys many
lessons. It teaches those of us who never had to think of such things,
about the gritty details of having very little money and no prospects of
change. Ehrenreich finds herself forced, for example, to live in motels be-
cause she is lacking the security deposit required to rent an apartment.
Those who cannot afford a car do not shop at Sams Club or Costco; they
shop at the corner convenience store, at the Seven Eleven. Those without
storage space or a freezer are unable to buy large quantities of food,
which is cheaper than buying one meal at a time. Those who do not even
own a stoveand motel rooms typically do not provide such access
have to eat out, and even fast food eventually gets to be more expensive
than preparing meals. Ehrenreich describes the health problems caused by
strenuous repetitive work done by people who are on their feet all day,
standing, carrying heavy trays, bending, scrubbing, reaching, and lifting.
These workers typically cannot afford high-quality shoes, healthclub
memberships, or regular chiropractic adjustments. Often, they cannot af-
ford health insurance and proper medical care. So-called wellness is not
for the poor. Wellness is based on two conditions: money and flexibility,
both of which Barbara Ehrenreich, the journalist, has, neither of which
Barbara Ehrenreich, the maid, has.
Kozol writes about children. I have two young children and know
what it is like to get that phone call from school: Your child is running a
temperature of 102. Please come and pick him up. My typical response
is: Ill be right there, knowing I can find a colleague to teach my class,
cancel office hours or a meeting, and do my writing at night. It is unimag-
inable that I would have to worry not only about where to quickly get
some Childrens Tylenol but whether or not I will lose my job because of
missed work. When my kids get sick, we worry about sore throats and
coughs. When poor peoples children get sick their caretakers may face an
existential crisis.
Poverty, in other words, is its own world, with its own dynamics and
laws and realities not captured by statistics. Poverty is dehumanizing. It un-
dermines the essence of being because it prevents people from taking care
of basic needs. It violates what the Brazilian educator Paolo Freire calls a
universal human ethic, an ethic unafraid to oppose exploitation of labor,
an ethic that does not show obedience only to the law of profit, an ethic not
restricted to the forces of the market (Freire, 1998). He calls on us [to]
condemn the fabrication of illusions, in which the unprepared become
hopelessly trapped and the weak and the defenseless are destroyed (p. 23).
Poverty is the brutal manifestation of an unethical system, not only de-
grading and dehumanizing but also impeding the development of the mind.
While solving the problems of poverty will inevitably involve education,
schooling is now mired in the problems of poverty.
Disparity of Educational Resources

As we have all come to understand, the system of school funding in the
United States rewards the wealthy and middle class with well-funded
schools while depriving schools with a high concentration of low-income
students. Rather than helping to equalize economic conditions, schools
themselves differ greatly in terms of the quality, safety, and aesthetics of
buildings, the variety and quality of programs, the equipment they are
able to make available, access to technology, science labs, libraries, ex-
tracurricular programs, gyms, pools, and playing fields, and, of course,
the ability to attract and retain quality teachers.
Disparities of resources available to schools are largely the conse-
quence of a funding system that relies heavily on local property taxes. As
a result, wealthy communities are able to pay a smaller share of their in-
come to fund public schools for their children and nevertheless spend rel-
atively large amounts on their childrens schools. Poor communities may
tax themselves at a higher rate but end up with less money to be spent on
schooling. While inherently unequal, the system continues to exist be-
cause the American public at large refuses to examine how the non-poor
perpetuate poverty and the myriad ways in which middle- and upper-
class students benefit from the existence of the poverty of schools
attended by others.
Rather than blaming teachers for the underachievement of poor stu-

dents, we also need to do much more studying by looking at the extraordi-
nary efforts that many middle-class parents put into gaining advantages for
their childrens education. The standards of recent school reform move-
ments are not going to remain a static target for everyone to attain because
it is not in the best interest of middle-class parents to have others catch up
to their children (Van Galen, 2004). What needs to be envisioned, instead,
is a system of schooling in which wealthier students do not have students in
poor schools as a benchmark against which to gauge their own achieve-
ment. One of the insidious characteristics of a stratified system, in other
words, consists in its appeal to those who find themselves better off than
many others and who are benefiting from the existence of the underprivi-
leged. White middle-class parents may embrace ideologies of equality and
justice, and may well teach their young children to share, this ethic of
sharing is neither far-reaching nor does it translate into a sharing of priv-
ilege (Brantlinger, 2003; and this volume). Sharing of privilege would,
after all, constitute a contradiction in terms, almost a violation of a per-
sons habitus, to use the terminology of Pierre Bourdieu.
Bourdieu saw habitus as the basis for a persons daily actions, and
to be understood as a system of long-lasting dispositions, created and
changed through a mix of objective social structure and personal experi-
ences. Players (in other words: individuals in a given society) learn certain
dispositions, often subconsciously, according to their position in the
field, the social sphere, the game of life (1984). Examples include
such seemingly insignificant things as body techniques, ways of walking,
eating, talking, body posture, and sense of social distance. They also in-
clude, however, habits of classification, making sense of, constructing,
and evaluating the social world. Habitus can be interpreted, in other
words, as a set of instruments individuals possess and use, often subcon-
sciously, as trump cards in the game, thus determining success or
failure in achieving a desired position on the field (Mahar, Harker, and
Wilkes, 1990, pp. 1012). Meritocractic ideas, or the notion that one
gets what one deserves, are attempts of making sense of an existing so-
cial world, of explaining what is and why. These ideas have been deeply
instilled as part of the habitus of both the poor and the non-poor. Among
the poor, Bourdieu speaks of an ingrained sense of limits (1984,
p. 471), mirroring the sense of entitlement shared by those who are bet-
ter-off. This sense-making that assumes that individuals attain what they
deserve may be at the core of our collective reluctance to address, and ul-
timately to resolve disparities in resources available to poor children and
to their more privileged peers.
As far as school funding is concerned, there have been efforts to equal-
ize it; poor school districts have taken the matter to the courts many times
and often achieved legal victory. Those victories, however, hardly ever led
to effective reform. Things stayed the same, often because those who gain
from the existing system did everything in their power to sabotage the
court decisions. It seems taboo to seriously consider a redistribution of re-
sources for it would run counter to both the notion of meritocracy and the
related idea that freedom means the ability to reap all of the benefits of
ones own labor, no matter how obscene those benefits might be.
I encounter such attitudes in my college classes: every so often I pro-
pose to institute an income cap based on the argument that no person can
possibly need more than half a million dollars per year to live comfort-
ably. In fact, I argue, more money is likely to cause harm, to be spent un-
wisely. Consequently, income exceeding half a million dollars per year
ought to be taxed at a rate of 100 percent and redistributed among those
of lower income. The students reactions are always strong, and mostly
negative. They view the proposal as an entirely un-American idea, a
significant limitation of personal freedom. They wonder how anyone can
be expected to stay motivated if deprived of the opportunity to reap the
full benefits of labor or success. Such a cap, they argue, would certainly
lead to fraudulent behavior; people would simply hide their profits to
avoid paying taxes. While the students are appalled by vivid accounts of
how a wealthy nation like the United States allows for poverty to exist,
they are equally outraged at the tax proposal. One of the reasons for their
strong negative feelings, I think, is a deeply rooted belief that the wealth
of some is unrelated to the poverty of others and that, despite all rhetoric,
it must be the poors own fault if they find themselves in an economically
deprived situation.
Shifting Perspective: Focusing on the Non-Poor

The purpose of initiating conversations in the classroom like the one just
described is similar to Ehrenreichs attempt to focus the attention on us,
on the non-poor, and on the myriad ways in which we keep a system
alive that continues to breed poverty. This particular idea is in sync with
a proposal made by the president of the Poverty Coalition in North Car-
olina, Dr. Gordon Chamberlin. He proposed at a meeting of the South
Atlantic Philosophy of Education Society in 2002 that the organizations
members interview four colleagues in academia about whether and if so,
how, the issue of poverty is addressed in their teaching. Chamberlins the-
ory was that while poverty and the poor are hardly understudied, acade-
mics do not address how academia benefits from the existence of poverty.
His proposal was intended to refocus the camera on those of us who are
not poor, a major shift in the history of how American society has dealt
with poverty for centuries.
The question arises how, exactly, the non-poor benefit from poverty.
In thinking about the routines of daily life, examples abound. Salaried pro-
fessionals benefit from the fact that child care workers wages are lowit
makes child care affordable for them. As consumers, we benefit from low
prices charged at large chain stores that keep employees pay and benefits
to a minimum. We benefit from underpaid cleaning and maintenance
workers who take care of our office buildings and our homesoften as
part-time workers, often without job security or benefits, often being paid
under the table. We benefit from the cleaning crew who sweeps and
wipes and polishes for minimum wage once we have left our offices, or the
cafeteria workers who serve meals they may be unable to afford them-
selves. One could add the adjunct professors who teach classes instead of
full-time faculty because the market permits the academy to build, exploit,
and maintain its own reserve army. More precisely, an excess of Ph.D.s in
most academic disciplines supplies the academic job market with large
numbers of people who are highly specialized and thus prepared only for
a relatively small number of jobs. Unless they find alternative positions
elsewhere, the colleges and universities are able to string them along with
uncertain and temporary offers, without benefits or reliable long-term
prospects. This trend remains largely unchallenged by full-time faculty who
benefit from the minimum wage labor of those who lack alternatives and
who thus do not argue with unattractive assignments such as teaching large
classes, undergraduate entry-level classes, survey classes, or those that are
offered at undesirable times or in undesirable classrooms and locations.
In regard to schooling, several scholars have made the argument that
the haves benefit from perpetuating a system that produces have-
nots. Bruce Biddle addresses the resource management used by the rich
and powerful to ensure their advantages. He refers to analysts who, simi-
lar to this author, argue that in order to understand a major cause of
poverty one ought to look at the conduct of those who are not impover-
ished. In education, affluent parents will use their resources and influence
in order to assure that the system works in their childrens favor. They are
playing the system in myriad ways, including the support of policies such
as tracking which, under the cloak of merit, tend to benefit their children,
lobbying legislators that support their interests, manipulating school per-
sonnel, and working to keep an unequal school funding system in place
(2001, pp. 2122). Others have studied and shown how not just extremely
wealthy but middle-class parents make use of an existing system in order to
benefit their children. Middle-class parents are more prone than lower-
class parents to intervene on behalf of their children. They tend to influence
decisions regarding their childrens placement in advanced courses and
make use of their own college experience to navigate the system and to
obtain information about what courses are beneficial for their childrens
future. Making use of ones clout or social capital, however, means bol-
stering structures that allow some to enjoy advantages at the expense of
others (Brantlinger, 2003; Roundfield Lucas, 1999).
The next question that arises is how can it be that generally good-
hearted people consciously or inadvertently keep alive and rationalize a
system so blatantly unfair if it works to their advantage? This is a difficult
question. Ellen Brantlinger seems convinced that the educated middle
class, who takes advantage of relative privilege, is only believed to be lib-
eral, progressive, and generally generous. She writes that [o]n a theoret-
ical level this class is populist and democratic, but on subconscious and
unspoken levels we eschew both equitable distributions of resources and
substantial inclusion of others into our exclusive communities (2003,
p. 192; see also Brantlinger, this volume). Generally, good-hearted people
may be good examples of contradictions between values-spoken, or
that what is professed, and values-lived, meaning actions and behavior
(Philipsen, 1999), although they are probably acting in the best interests
of their children.
One could also use Bourdieus ideas once again in order to attempt
an answer to this question of the seeming indifference among otherwise
good-hearted people. Considering the power of habitus as, among other
things, a way to make sense of the world, it becomes clear that much of
what people do is based on a system of deeply ingrained assumptions that
do not need to be revisited unless something significant happens, such as
the confrontation of a disorienting dilemma (Mezirow, 2000, p. 22).
It is thus not surprising that perfectly good-hearted people can go
through the world, playing the game, benefiting from it at the expense of
others, and still feel good about themselves. In a way, we dont know
what we are doing.
What, however, would bring about change? If it takes the agency of
the non-poor to solve the issue of poverty whosince they benefit from
the system have no reason initiate changeand if people only change
once they have encountered disorienting dilemmas, then what will
bring about the necessary dilemmas to spark that change?
Instead of asking these kinds of questions, American history provides
ample examples of how poverty has been addressed solely through efforts
to change the poor. The historian Michael Katz delineates this his-
tory (1995). He points to deeply ingrained thinking and habitual policy
making that concentrate solely on the poor when seeking to address
the problem of poverty. Katz makes it clear that in order to understand
contemporary poverty we need to look at the past. He shows how nine-
teenth-century reformers attributed poverty to drinking, laziness, and
what is generally considered bad behavior. Subsequently, they de-
signed public policy to improve the character of poor people rather than
structural factors such as the exploitation of cheap labor at the core of in-
dustrialization and the subsequently growing gap between the rich and
the poor. Katz writes: . . . reformers emphasized individual regeneration
through evangelical religion, temperance legislation, punitive conditions
for relief, family breakup, and institutionalization. Of course, as a reform
strategy, improving poor people did not end with the nineteenth or early-
twentieth centuries, as almost any contemporary discussion of welfare
reform reveals. Indeed, in the 1990s, discussion of inner-city poverty in-
voke an underclass, defined primarily by bad behavior, not by poverty,
and deemed to be more in need of improvement than cash (pp. 34).
Katz claims, furthermore, that education has been given a starring
role in the effort to improve poor people. Public schools have been ex-
pected to solve social problems, assigning them an impossibly great load
and setting them up for failure. He concludes that as the history of edu-
cation shows, improving poor people not only misdiagnosed the issues;
it also time and again has deflected attention from their structural origins
and from difficult and uncomfortable responses they require (1995,
pp. 34). It is worth considering to what extent current educational poli-
cies continue to reflect this legacy and to what extent we have now
moved beyond it and are content with simply creating and operating
schools for poor children.
One difficult and uncomfortable response to poverty, to use Katzs
words, consists in a call to us, the non-poor, to take poverty personally
and to realize our role in its existence. It is a call to stop focusing on the
poor alone when we talk about poverty. What, exactly, does that mean,
and how does this idea translate into practice other than charity giving on
the part of the non-poor who may say something like What can I do? I
dont even know any poor people! For one, I am advocating the con-
ceptual development of the twin ideas of (a) redistributing resources; and
(b) reevaluating the value of work, on the basis of which it might become
possible to act, for instance, in revamping the welfare system. Harrell
Rogers Jr. (1996) argues that Americans might take cues from Western
European and Scandinavian countries, especially from innovative pro-
grams in Sweden, Germany, and France (p. 128). Although international
comparisons tend to be tricky, it ought to be mentioned that while the
major industrial nations of Western Europe have not eradicated poverty,
their poverty rates are significantly lower than the U.S. rate (p. 108).
The dominant focus on the poor when addressing poverty in policy
or academic discourse, however, is not merely habit but also beneficial to
the non-poor. Martin Packer argued that the traditional classification of
middle class and lower class no longer adequately describes the job
structure in the United States (2001). Rather, the emerging class structure
consists of an inner ring of permanent skilled workers and an outer
ring of temporary, semi-skilled, disposable workers without benefits, va-
cations, or sick leave. The two-tiered job structure is not confined to the
manufacturing industry; it is growing in academia, for instance, where
tenured, salaried faculty constitute an inner core while the outer core con-
sists of temporary, untenured, and underpaid adjunct professors hired by
the course and moving from job to job. At any rate, the argument con-
tinues, the new economy demands a flexible workforce willing to work
varying hours at a high pace, rendering the economy competitive and
productive, always prepared to be laid off and rehired. Schools, Packer
claims, are expected to produce the human bricks with which the global
economy is being built (pp. 27879).
For those who find themselves in the inner ring of the economy, there
is little reason to focus on us, the well-to-do, and how we might be able to
address poverty. Those who feel secure within the system are able to ignore
those who are not. Others worry primarily about their own lot given that
recent shifts in the economy and layoffs in managerial ranks have rendered
even members of the middle class feeling vulnerable, sharing a fear of
falling (Ehrenreich, 1989). The Chamberlin proposal, however, suggests a
change in perspective. It resembles the recent shift in the literature on race
relations where some have begun to argue that the focus of discussion
needed to be on white privilege, and on whiteness in general instead of
viewing racism as a black issue. In order to address racism it seemed no
longer sufficient to solely focus on past and present issues shaping the lives
of African-Americans. Addressing racism meant more than studying the his-
tory of racial segregation and discrimination or becoming knowledgeable of
disturbing statistics illustrating such things as the achievement gap or mi-
nority poverty, incarceration, dropout, and single parents, which illustrate
continuing inequalities. It is not sufficient for well-intentioned whites to par-
ticipate in discussions about oppositional cultures and programs designed
to level the playing field such as affirmative action, head start, remedial ed-
ucation, the Afrocentric curriculum, multicultural education, culturally rel-
evant teaching, bilingual education and resegregation movements. It was
time, some began to say, that we stop focusing on blacks and on other mi-
norities and instead look at whiteness, at those who benefit, possibly with-
out conscious acknowledgment, from a system and from practices that
continue to be discriminatory in myriad ways.
Christine Sleeter (1997) talks about a dualism embedded in white
consciousness: on the one hand the belief that we are good and caring
people while, on the other hand, an unwillingness on the part of whites to
jeopardize our relative comfort and privileges by questioning the existing
social system which, after all, does not afford equal opportunities to all.
Alice McIntyre, in her research of racial identities among white teachers,
concluded that participants in her study found it difficult to generate

enough rage at contemporary white racism to decenter the privileged
racial positions they currently hold. It seemed that, for them, racism was
a thing of the past and had over time been replaced by the American
Dream and by the belief in the power of the individual. McIntyre calls for
a myriad of things in order to address these misconceptions, and they all
involve the agency of whites, for example, whites becoming more self-
reflective about understandings of race, racism, and constructions of
what it means to be white in this country (McInryre, 1997, pp. 135139,
14). Specifically in regard to white teachers, one of her proposals is to ad-
dress our own complicity around issues of educational racism and to be
held accountable for exlusionary practices in schools (p. 148).
It is not clear how much of an effect on racial discrimination this shift
in the debate about race has had so far (focusing on whiteness may not
have led to significant improvements for those who are non-white). Be
that as it may, a similar shift might well be productive in debates about
poverty. Race can only cease to matter if whites take it personally, un-
derstand the implications of their privilege, and translate that under-
standing into action such as, in the case of teachers, questioning tracking
and testing practices that have been shown to work out better for whites
than for non-whites. Along the same lines, class will only cease to matter
greatly, and poverty will only disappear, if those who benefit from class
stratification and poverty of others begin to take poverty personally. This
could take the form of political advocacy, for instance for a living wage,
or for other forms of participation in what Brantlinger (2003) sees as cur-
rently emerging movements. She argues that rapid technological develop-
ments and political globalization have led to a revolutionary period
during which growing and extreme social class polarization cause many
individuals to react in ways that are both idealistic and activist. She
names as one example recent protests against the World Trade Organiza-
tion in Seattle and cites other authors who have called for people to gen-
erate positive fantasies and mental images depicting future events
(Oettingen, 1996) and to capture the national imagination with a large
moral mission (Schudson, 1998). In short, she sees a distinct possibility
for transformative movements that would disrupt the existing social
order (Brantlinger, 2003, pp. 19899).
In What Ways Can Schools Address Poverty?

Concerning education, it is an appealing notion that schools are able to
make a significant difference and improve students lives. Educational
scholars have repeatedly argued that teaching has a moral dimension
(Goodlad, 1990; Noddings, 2002; Strike and Soltis, 1998), a dimension
not confined to shaping student character or to the teachers ability to
make informed ethical decisions in the classroom. Rather, the moral di-
mension of teaching, and of schooling at-large, includes the mission to
make substantial contributions to building a social system based on social
justice, one, I might add, in which no one would be subjected to poverty.
Gloria Ladson-Billings argued more than a decade ago that good schools
and effective teaching indeed matter in that they can make a difference in
students lives and learning (Ladson Billings, 1994).
Thoughtful work has been done since by educators who searched for
ways to make schools more responsive to the children of the poor with-
out blaming the children or their families. Michael S. Knapp and Associ-
ates, for example, published Teaching for Meaning in High-Poverty
Classrooms in 1995. Knapp argues that teachers and administrators in
high-poverty schools are faced with manifold factors that complicate
school life. They need to deal with a high mobility rate among children
who not only have many diverse needs but who are also not very savvy at
doing school, playing the game, and knowing how to function effec-
tively within the institution. In addition, poor schools have relatively few
resources and second-rate facilities. Teaching and learning, in other
words, are challenges. Knapp argues, however, that dwelling on the con-
ditions of poor childrens homes and communitieswhich has been a
widespread response to the problemis one-sided and ultimately not
productive. Such focus ignores the relationship between teachers and
learners. If one were to look at this relationship, he writes, questions
other than the deficiencies of the students become important, questions
such as, what does each party know about the life of the other? One is
reminded here of Freires work, a scholar who has repeatedly inspired ed-
ucational communities around the world with his insistence on the im-
portance of viewing teaching as a two-way street, where both the student
and the teacher learn in the process (1998).
Viewing teaching as a mutual process, Knapp and his colleagues de-
lineate what, exactly, it takes to construct productive teacher-student re-
lationships in high-poverty classrooms. They focus on matters over which
teachers exert most control in the daily operation of the classroom: es-
tablishing order and responding to cultural diversity. The authors chal-
lenge conventions undergirding most of the teaching in high-poverty
classrooms, namely, the focus on childrens deficiencies, sought to be
remedied through the teaching of discrete skills. The curriculum is typi-
cally based on fixed sequences, from basic to advanced skills, accompa-
nied by a teaching style that is fast paced and tightly controlled to keep
the students on task. Students are segregated by ability; they are tracked
and their achievement is measured through standardized tests.
An alternative to this type of teaching is captured in the literature on
teaching for understanding, a philosophy of teaching that informs
Knapps work. Proponents view knowledge as connected rather than dis-

crete and attempt to relate classrooms to the students world and experi-
ences. The ultimate goal is for students to be able to make meaning of
their instructional experiences. Making meaning connotes being able to
make sense of school experiences, viewing things as parts of a whole
rather than as disconnects, and, finally, connecting new learning experi-
ences to already existing knowledge (Knapp, 1995, pp. 110).
In summary, a great deal of hope continues to be invested in schools
and in the idea that schools can be instrumental in bringing about social
change rather than succumbing to structural confines. This notion of
hope, of course, has a long history. In fact, it is rooted in the very mission
of the public education system.
Ever since the public schools came into existence, their advocates ar-
gued that one of the schools central missions was to help eradicate social
class stratification and poverty. Education, then, beyond all other de-
vises of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of men,
the balance wheel of the social machinery, as Horace Mann phrased it
in 1849. He argued that education would . . . give each man the inde-
pendence and the means by which he can resist the selfishness of other
men. It does better than to disarm the poor of their hostility toward the
rich: it prevents being poor. . . . The spread of education, by enlarging the
cultivated class or caste, will open a wider area over which the social feel-
ings will expand; and, if this education would be universal and complete,
it would do more than all things else to obliterate factitious distinctions
in society (p. 60).
At least in the minds of some, the common schools were supposed to
ameliorate, if not eradicate, the influence social class had in shaping an
individuals life. Schools were promoted as being essential for the provi-
sion of equal opportunities, for leveling the playing field and realizing
the dream that everyone has a chance to succeed in America, irrespective
of class background. Such notions of schools as equalizers are not entirely
confined to the American context but can be found in other countries as
well. There are indications, however, that while educators in particular
wish to embrace the notion that schools can truly affect students posi-
tions in society and ultimately lead to a more just social order, the reality
may be sobering.
Limitations of Educational Reform

for Addressing Poverty
Comparing changes in educational opportunities in thirteen countries
(including the United States, Germany, England and Wales, Italy, Switz-
erland, the Netherlands, Sweden, Japan, Taiwan, Poland, Hungary,
Czechoslovakia, and Arabs living in Israel), Hans-Peter Blossfeld and

Yossi Shavitt argue that inequality of educational opportunity remained
rather stable over time in most of the countries under study, despite sig-
nificant expansions of the educational systems in all of them (Blossfeld
and Shavitt, 1993). While the average level of educational attainment
rose, and primary and even some lower secondary education became
nearly universal, the higher levels of education did not expand at the
same pace, creating a bottleneck effect, unable to absorb the increasing
numbers of graduates from the lower school systems. Effective equaliza-
tion occurred only in two countries, Sweden and the Netherlands, both of
which made attempts to equalize socioeconomic conditions. According to
the authors, economic reform precedes educational equalization, render-
ing educational reforms ineffective in changing educational stratification
and reducing educational inequalities between socioeconomic strata. Sim-
ply stated, social class is a powerful factor in shaping educational oppor-
tunities, and it seems as if social class diminishes in influence through
economic, not educational reforms.
The preceding analysis illustrates a dilemma: schools do provide op-
portunities in peoples lives, and yet they do not, or only within limits. To
what extent they can provide opportunities depends to a large extent on
the labor market. Recent statistics reveal that higher levels of education
cannot necessarily solve the problems generated by economic shifts to
part-time and temporary employment. To illustrate the point, the U.S.
Department of Labor projects that the occupations characterized by the
largest job growth between 2002 and 2012 are occupations thatwith
few exceptionsneither require advanced degrees nor promise substan-
tial earnings. While registered nurses and postsecondary teachers are
leading in terms of projected job growth, the next greatest growth will be
in retail salespersons, customer service representatives, combined food
preparation and serving workers (including fast food), cashiers, janitors
and cleaners, general and operations managers, waiters and waitresses,
nursing aides, orderlies, attendants, truck drivers, receptionists, and se-
curity guards (U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics,
2004). As far as numbers are concerned, in other words, the vast major-
ity of jobs are created in low-income service occupations. This data needs
to be combined with another trend, however, namely, that . . . since the
late 1970s, average premiums paid by the labor market to those with
higher levels of education have increased (Horrigan, 2004, p. 16). While
the number of high-paying jobs is not increasing, in other words (quite
the opposite, low-paying jobs show the greatest increase) monetary re-
wards for those who have been able to obtain advanced educational de-
grees and landed one of the relatively few high-paying jobs, have been
increasing. . . . [I]t is the growing distance, on average, between those
with more education, compared with those with less, that speaks to a
general preference on the part of employers to hire those with skills asso-
ciated with higher levels of education (p. 16). In other words, while
higher education used to be a sufficient but not necessary condition for
economic advancement, the trend has been reversed: advanced degrees
are now necessary preconditions for economic success, yet they do not
guarantee it (Diamond and Wergin, 2001, p. 4).
Conclusion
Poverty is a dehumanizing condition without a defensible place in a na-
tion as wealthy as the United States. Yet it continues to exist and even in-
crease. I have made the argument that perhaps it is time to shift the locus
of analysis as to why poverty exists and how it can be eradicated from the
poor to those of us who are not poor, as captured by the Chamberlin pro-
posal. This proposal does not suggest that the nation can rely on schools
and on other educational institutions to fix the ills produced by the econ-
omy and reflected in the labor market. Neither does it suggest what sta-
tistics question anyway, namely, that schools can be expected to enable
everyone to escape poverty and low-paying jobs through education. Such
is the myth, which is defied by current economic trends and by experi-
ences in other nations. So what can be done? Chamberlin appeals to aca-
demics, in particular, not to solve the ominous problem of poverty but to
take the first step and to focus our analysis on the non-poor, on ourselves
as academics, in other words. That, if nothing else, is what academics
ought to be able to do: shape ways of thinking and talking about a cer-
tain matter, and provide reasons for changing a nations discourse. I
would like to speculate what that could mean for academics teaching
and research practice. What, in other words, do we need to do? The fol-
lowing represent suggestions for initial steps:
Academics should begin to look at our own shop and discuss

how we benefit from adjunct faculty exploitation through wage
compression, the same dynamic that produces the working poor.
Academics should examine their curricula and research agendas
to find out whether and if so, how, we address the issue of
poverty. Perhaps we do, and if so, we ought to deal with another
set of questions, namely, could critical academics find stature in
their fields if the problems of poverty were solved? What would
we then write about? As K. Lynch and C. ONeill argued, op-
pressed groups have long been the subjects of research conducted
by educational sociologists (and by scholars in other fields, one
might add). As such, they have been . . . generally excluded
from the dialogue about themselves (Lynch and ONeill, 1994,
p. 308).
Teach students in various disciplines not merely about poverty and

the poor but shift the focus and analyze structural origins of pov-
erty, economic dynamics that produce and perpetuate poverty.
Include in our teaching, discussions about responsibilities of the
non-poor for existing structures and practices that perpetuate
poverty, wealthy privilege, and the myriad ways in which the
non-poor take advantage of and, in turn, rationalize poverty.
Do something this one chapter cannot do alone: pool the creative
energies of academics and propose realistic, practical, doable
ways to eradicate poverty once and for all. It takes the non-poor
to do that. It takes us.
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11
INTERSECTIONS ON THE BACK ROAD
CLASS, CULTURE, AND EDUCATION
IN RURAL AND APPALACHIAN PLACES
Van Dempsey
Introduction
This chapter, as it focuses on rural and Appalachian contexts, is about
white within white intersectionality, and about how power and privilege
are enacted within whiteness. It is also about the juxtaposition of com-
plexities of culture within rurality and Appalachia and the monolithic
treatment of that context from outside observers and critics. This analy-
sis comes out of an intersection of race, class, and place to, as Kimberl
W. Crenshaw recommends, . . . account for multiple grounds of identity
when considering how the social world is constructed (n.d., p. 2). It is
also, according to Crenshaws work on intersectionality, . . . a project
that presumes that categories have meaning and consequences but with
the caveat that the . . . most pressing problem . . . is not the existence of
the categories, but rather the particular values attached to them, and the
way those values foster and create social hierarchies (p. 13). Finally,
Crenshaws thesis legitimates the position that critical acts of resistance
for the marginalized in these hierarchies include defending a politics of
social location rather than vacating and destroying it (p. 14).
To understand identity is to understand the point where categories in-
tersect, and this chapter is an effort to shed light on those points for poor
and working-class people in rural and Appalachian places. Of particular im-
portance for understanding rural and Appalachian social hierarchies is the
way in which the hierarchies create tensions for young people, as they are
287
288 Van Dempsey
pushed out of the context by education, ambition, and economic pres-

sures to leave the local world around them, and are simultaneously pulled
back by parents, families, and local communities that treat the exodus as
a betrayal to the local culture and familial ties and obligations. Rural and
Appalachian children and young adults in particular, as will be seen later in
this chapter, are positioned low in social hierarchies, and the pulling and
pushing are as much acts of resistance as they are the inculcation of low
ambition as it sometimes seems to be portrayed by cultural observers and
critics. Given the changing economic dynamics of rural places, this pulling
back and pressure to stay can be difficult for young people. For example, the
old extractive economic base of Appalachia around coal, other mineral re-
sources, and timber is increasingly disappearing, and not being replaced in
all places where it disappears. Where it is being replaced, it tends to be by
tourism, low-wage labor, and service economies (e.g., Walmart). As is often
the case, education is held up as the solution to economic woes. But this
tends to be a double-edged sword as public schools have been one of a host
of public institutions which, in the control of privileged white citizens, fail to
serve well children in poverty and the working class. Also, for children and
young people who do realize access to the promises of higher-quality edu-
cation, the road to economic opportunity tends to lead out and away. Fi-
nally, social class hierarchies themselves are convoluted by the layering of
whiteness within rural and Appalachian places. The complicating factor is
not alwaysor even usuallyrace or gender (alone) but the limitations and
stratification within whiteness around constructions such as poor white
trash, rednecks, and hillbillies.
A complicating factor for doing this work where white intersects
white is that much of the history and narrative of the shades of whiteness
within rurality and Appalachia includes marginalization of others by
marginalized poor and working-class whites. Even limited power and
privilege gives power over some group somewhere. In the context of in-
tersectionality, whites in rural and Appalachia places can be run down
and simultaneously run down others in the intersections by their own ve-
hicles of marginalization. This is a critical, though not totalizing, aspect
of whiteness outside of urban and suburban America.
This chapter will consider the ways in which identity can be misun-
derstood and misrepresented in a social context that is typically treated
simplistically and monolithically by observers (both inside and outside
the social context). Many of the representations of rurality and Ap-
palachia are simplified due to a lack of understanding and recognition of
the contexts social and cultural complexities, and also as part of margin-
alization: representation is easier to manipulate in simple culturally con-
strained terms such as the ones sometimes applied to rurality and
Appalachia. This mistaken identity politics will be examined in light of
Intersections on the Back Road 289
broader cultural assumptions and in media and pop culture treatments of

rural and Appalachian people. To turn a phrase, all politics may be local,
but all politics of identity are not. Important parts of the construction of
identity around class in rural and Appalachian settings involve infiltra-
tions from outside the local area. These infiltrations include mythologies
about rural and Appalachian America, images of chronic poverty and dis-
possession, the failure and corruption of public institutions (in particular
schools), and the long-standing control of local Appalachian economies
by external forces that sent profits elsewhere. These factors suggest that
in representations, critiques, research on, and analysis of, rurality and
Appalachia, there is a real and the surreal, and it is not always
obvious which is which and where the two meet.
This chapter will be structured around several ways of looking at the
relationships of class, culture, and education in Appalachia and in rural
America. First, a picture of rurality and Appalachia will be presented from
statistical data and analysis of the impact of poverty and economic chal-
lenges in these two worlds. This will be followed by a summary of re-
search and writing that frames some of the impact of class history and
economic restructuring, and how these have altered the lives of rural and
Appalachian children. Finally, cultural assumptions about rurality and
Appalachia will be presented in the context of broader assumptions and
portrayals of whiteness as a marginalizing effort imposed on poor and
working-class whites in the context of rurality and Appalachia.
The Economics of Class

in Rurality and Appalachia
In an examination of poverty in the United States in 2002, the Save the
Children Foundation, focused specifically on rural poverty in the United
States, and identified central Appalachia as one of six areas of concen-
trated poverty in the country. The report identified five key themes as the
basis for chronic poverty in rural America, including Appalachia (Save
the Children, 2002):
Education that is often substandard;

Limited opportunities for child and youth development;
Inadequate health care;
Limitations in transportation and limited access to other physical
infrastructure;
The difficulty in attaining and maintaining family self sufficiency.
These key themes undergird the more general themes highlighted in

the introduction to this chapter, including problems of access to public
290 Van Dempsey
institutions for citizens in poverty and the working class. Even where they
are available at all, geography, local politics, and generally lower levels
of public funding create situations where support taken for granted in
some areas may not be assumed resources for people in rural places.
These resources, more readily available and accessible in other places,
may not close the gap left by parents, families, and communities inabil-
ity to provide them.
Similar data can be found from other sources. Research from the
Annie E. Casey Foundation exhibits how class and economic issues play
out in West Virginia as a landscape of both rurality and Appalachia. The
2001 statistics on West Virginia include the following (AECF, 2002):
The median incomes of families with children in West Virginia were

at $37,500 compared with a median income in the United States of
$51,100, putting the state 36% below the national average.
Twenty-one percent of West Virginia youths are discon-
nected, defined by the foundation as 1824-year-olds not en-
rolled in school, not working, and holding no degree beyond
high school. Nationally, 15% of youths are disconnected, ac-
cording to this definition.
Nationally, 8% of teens age 1619 are neither working nor in
school, compared to 14% of West Virginia teens. West Virginia is
fiftieth among the states on this measure.
Of all the children in West Virginia, 33% live in families in which
no parent has full-time year-round employment. The average for
the United States is 25%, putting the state 32% above the na-
tional average, and ranking it forty-eighth among all states in this
category.
In West Virginia, 22% of all children live in poverty, compared to
16% for the United States, putting the state 37% higher than the
country and ranking it forty-sixth among all states in this category.
There are obvious obstacles to success for Appalachian young people,

and these economic conditions complicate the work of the schools. Some of
these barriers to success and access are cited by Katherine Cason 2001.
Compared to wealthier peers, she argues, poor children in rural areas
Are more likely to experience emotional and behavioral problems

and are at higher risk for mental health problems including de-
pression;
Are two to four times more likely to be admitted into psychiatric
outpatient care.
Are retained at grade level more frequently;

Are more likely to be born to parents who are not married;
Are more likely to be victim of violent crimes;
Are more likely to transition from childhood poverty to adult
poverty;
Score lower on state tests and are more likely to be drop outs.
(p. 30)
Cason concludes by citing additional concerns for children in

poverty, including data that shows that children in extreme poverty are
more likely to experience physical health problems, cognitive-related bar-
riers to learning, and experience lower levels of school achievement in
early grades. Finally, Cason argues that family income is a greater pre-
dictor of these problems than race or family structure.
Dehaan and Deal (2001) cite similar research, with parallel conclu-
sions, comparing rural adolescents to their urban counterparts. Among
the problems and barriers faced by adolescents, Dehaan and Deal (p. 44)
include the following stressors and barriers:
Higher concentrations of adolescent poverty;

Higher concentrations of single parent homes;
Higher incidences of gangs;
Higher incidences of crime among adolescents;
Fewer school curriculum choices;
Fewer structured out of school activities;
Fewer employment opportunities;
Greater frequency of social isolation.
Looking at families living at the intersections of rurality and poverty,

the authors amplify the differences between rural and urban contexts for
rural mothers: Poor rural women remain in poverty longer than poor
urban women. Contributing to these deeper experiences of poverty are cul-
tural and structural factors: work outside the home is not always valued in
rural communities and families; rural women are often less educated; and
rural families are larger and therefore more stressed. Meanwhile, women
have access to fewer childcare options in rural settings (DeHaan and Deal,
2001, p. 47).
While educational researchers have long attended to the many conse-
quences of urban poverty for children, educators may be less aware of the
fact that rural children face many of the same barriers and problems.
More poor children live in rural areas than in cities. Rural children are
likely to remain in poverty for longer periods of time, and rural children
292 Van Dempsey
attain lower levels of education. Rural children experience greater levels

of hunger, have more health-related issues, and are more likely to experi-
ence substance abuse than urban children. Rural children are more likely
to be involved in criminal activity. Finally, rural children are more likely
to be depressed and experience chronic loneliness (Deehan and Deal,
2001, p. 53).
This general pattern of sociocultural realities is extended in research
by Erik Stewart and his colleagues (2001) on parenting and its connection
to outcomes for adolescents in rural places. Their work on the relation-
ships between parenting practices and educational outcomes suggest that
rural families are hesitant to ask for help in social networks because in-
dividualism carries the day as a preeminent value. Rural adolescents are
less likely than their counterparts in other social settings to access or at-
tempt to access supports that may alleviate life stresses. This is a particu-
larly strong pattern where loneliness is an issue, as loneliness is connected
to depression. Parents in rural places exert greater pressure on their chil-
dren to attend to the needs and goals of the parents, and rural children
are more likely to concede to the pressure as teenagers when they are si-
multaneously feeling a need to be independent (p. 132). As rural teens
begin to feel the pressure of this psychological stress, they are simultane-
ously experiencing the constraints of the limited rural economy. Thus,
rural teens act in opposition to their own sense of occupational aspira-
tion, and instead limit their options to local realities (p. 143). Hence, the
research concludes, the problems are not so much academic failure as as-
pirational displacement. In the end the researchers argue, parents are un-
able to serve as adequate support mechanisms, in part because of their
own depression, mental health issues, and lack of economic opportunity
in their own lives.
The problems cited by Stewart and his colleagues are compounded
during periods of general economic decline. The economy in Appalachian
areas is chronically depressed, and there do not appear to be easy reme-
dies. As Robert Moore (2001) argues, the very incentives employed to
spur economic growth in other areas, instead deplete fiscal resources in
rural areas. When rural areas offer incentives for economic development
such as lower taxes, tax breaks, and subsidized infrastructure invest-
ments, the resources that public institutions need to alleviate the effects of
economic hardships are diminished. The sparse population in rural areas
further complicates the potential for economic vitality given the contexts
of geography and demography; public resourceswhere they existare
more likely to be regional rather than local.
Economic growth is confounded by all of these factors: a historically
and culturally based tendency for individuals to go it alone rather than
access public services where they exist; the absence of local institutions
that offer support for children and families; lack of resources; and, the
spiral of failed access to, and failed delivery from, public institutions. To-
gether, the economic picture is bleak, and high rates of poverty can be in-
escapable. If rural areas fail to offer incentives for economic development
the likelihood of economic development there is diminished. Yet offering
the public fiscal resources for development reduces public services avail-
able to address needs. Rural adolescents facing these barriers are unable
to access a productive economy. They are in many cases undereducated,
and face familial and local pressure to stay. Their parents and extended
families press the importance of ties to the local culture, ties to place, and
ties to the land. Those very connections virtually ensure in most rural
and Appalachian settings that it will be difficult to connect to any signif-
icant economic opportunity that will allow them to support themselves.
Equally important, it is difficult, if not fallacious, to make the claim that
dedicating oneself to becoming educated will pay off in quality of life
when most young people would have to leave the area to put their edu-
cation to use in the work force. It would appear that there is no way out,
literally and figuratively. Parents, families, and the sense of connection to
place become a source of connection and betrayal. Stay and you show
your ownership of local values, local culture, and where you come
from. Leave to take advantage of opportunities that exist elsewhere, and
betray your sense of place and familial and culturally based identity. For
the 21 percent of 1824-year-olds in regions of Appalachia who are dis-
connected from high schools, jobs, and further education (AECF, 2004),
class is experienced in destructive ways at the intersections of economic
deprivation and cultural resistance.
Class, Education, and Intrusion

into the Local Area
Economic data such as this is hard to square with broader cultural as-
sumptions about meritocracy. The work of providing public education
and other public services to young people in Appalachia is profoundly
complicated as they attend schools and attempt to access services at the
intersections with economic realities of a region devoid of economic op-
portunity. As has been said earlier, the assumption that access exists is er-
roneous, and the promise of opportunity where access exists may not be
legitimate given economic realities. As John Gaventa, Barbara Ellen
Smith, and Alex Willingham (1990) have noted, the general lack of eco-
nomic development and activity in Appalachia creates a blame the vic-
tim reaction where critics such as those in political power and those
who control economic and social institutions blame lack of economic
progress on schoolsand indirectly studentsfor not being educated
294 Van Dempsey
enough to generate prosperity. Appalachian children are treated, in

essence, as a bad raw product.
Yet research deflects this blame on two grounds. (1) Education diffi-
culties are tied to a history of segregated and underfunded schools; hence
there is no schooling structure for high performance relative to actual
economic opportunity and vitality. (2) Poor rural communities are not a
draw for high-paying jobs even if educational levels were higher. Recent
research on economic development suggest that rural areas are more at-
tractive for underpaid, low-salary jobs and less so for more lucrative em-
ployment, in part because underfunded education systems in rural areas
cannot compete with suburban urban resource bases for education
(Gaventa, Smith, and Willingham, 1990, p. 283). Under current funding
structures for schools, some Appalachian children may be able to turn ed-
ucation into a ladder, but rural schools do not provide systemic or insti-
tutionally strategic avenues of mobility. In spite of the profound affect of
class on education, and in spite of the large numbers of poor children in
rural areas, rural America (particularly Appalachia), has become invisible
in the discourse on social class. Recent scholarship on the intersections of
social class with other identity frames such as gender and race have fo-
cused primarily on urban settings. In fact, little information exists in the
current literature that looks at rurality as a compelling and signature lo-
cation of narratives and research relative to class; work on class and
schooling in rural areas is even rarer.
An exception is Cynthia Duncan (1999) whose work cuts across mul-
tiple rural contexts, including specific portraits and examinations of class
in Appalachia. Duncan discusses three components of class in rural areas:
(1) class as part of the broader social structure of rural contexts; (2) the
way in which caricatures and monolithic identities of Appalachian poverty
affect rural places and influence identity formation within them; and
(3) how class is played out against a backdrop of locally corrupt politics in
public institutions, particularly schools. Duncan uses these elements to
expose the struggles that people experience in attempting to (or failing to)
access the social, cultural institutional resources needed to negotiate
the world outside of the immediately local area. Young people grappling
with identity in these contexts have limited access to resources that might
help them to build alternative narratives of their lives. Furthermore, the
outright abuse of power and privilege in their communities often denies
them access to whatever limited resources might otherwise be available
(Duncan, 1999).
Duncans (1999) work spotlights the importance of understanding
Appalachian poverty and working-class struggles as important social and
historical narratives in themselves; they are also important because of the
connections to similar themes for the poor and working class in urban
contexts. She suggests that Studying rural communities offers advan-

tages for making the connection between the face-to-face relations and
common experiences people have and larger social processes involving
structures of class and power (p. 192). Duncan makes a strong claim that
the process of critiquing and understanding class relations must be done
within the perspective of place in rural settings. This is particularly true in
Appalachia where geographic inaccessibility and confinement, and the
prominence of natural resources and land, are such crucial elements in
defining identity through place. The combination of rigid class structure
and corrupt institutional politics such as those in school systems are cen-
tral in the stories of these places and in the way in which the historical
and social class narratives play over time (p. 197).
Duncan centralizes schooling as the main source of hope for commu-
nities to turn their fate toward more opportunity. She believes that of all
possible access points, public schools still stand as the most likely win-
dow of opportunity in Appalachia (1999, p. 208). It is important to note
that she makes this claim in the process of revealing the stories of the
poor and working-class citizens in rural Mississippi, in the mountains of
West Virginia, and in a rural small town in New England. Her claims are
based on hope for the first two locations (what could be), and based on
evidence (what has happened) from her assessment of the progressive
community values of the third. This claim is also made in the context of
her own analysis of the corrupting and limiting institutional culture of
schools that helped to create the marginalization of the poor and of the
working class in the first place. While their track record is clearly incon-
sistent, Duncan believes that public schools can be a critical access point
for economic opportunity and accessibility. But the record and the strate-
gic opportunity must be understood in a broader examination and un-
derstanding of rural social and historical analysis, and understanding of
the cultural contexts in which schools and the local economy are situated.
While Duncans analysis brings her to the door of the school, Ruth
Panelli (2002) employs a more wide-ranging and contested framework of
what it means to be poor and working class in rural areas, especially
what it means to be a poor or working-class rural child. She cites four
contexts in which youth identities are constructed, each of which, she ar-
gues, must be understood in rurality: space (local and beyond), culture,
politics, and economy (p. 120). This set of frames adds . . . details, com-
plexity and diversity of young peoples rural lives to the discourse on
how young people construct identities in rural places (p. 120). Panellis
four areas of contextual analysis pull the construction of rural into the
intersection with class, education, and other elements in the construction
of identity for rural youths. Her strategies (p. 117) for contextual analy-
sis all serve to constrain and enable how identities are constructed. The
296 Van Dempsey
first, cultural context, includes the family and local community, their
belief systems, the social capital used for wider interpretations and nego-
tiations of identity, and how they all . . . serve to shape the practices
and values in a young persons immediate rural experiences. . . . The sec-
ond, politicaleconomic, includes the material and work conditions,
the wider economic processes that young people experience, and access to
institutional resourcesincluding schoolsthat position young people
for work and education. The third, sociopolitical, includes structures
and social/power relations, roles of ethnicity, gender, class, and how they
intersect with class. The fourth, spatial, includes issues such as the free-
dom of movement (or lack of it) within a social context, the panoptic ef-
fect of adults in close proximity in a rural fishbowl. Critical to this
transparency is making explicit the ways in which local politics and social
identities are constructed in rural places, and understanding how the
places themselves are social-cultural constructions. In the context of rural
places where poverty and the working poor are pervasive, class is a criti-
cal component of the construction (p. 114).
Offering yet another layer to our consideration, Roger A. Lohman
(2002) gives four frameworks in his analysis of the intersections of
poverty and culture in rurality. His work focuses on explanatory models
that link poverty in critical ways to the broader understanding of culture
within the region. These perspectives include the following:
1. Poverty as lack of economic development (Bureaucratic Realism);

2. Poverty as beliefs, attitudes, and regional folkways as factors for
understanding poverty (subsistence and high levels of poverty are
normal); resignation, fatalism, family patterns, health, and
child rearing (Appalachian Culturalism);
3. Poverty as a necessary condition of labor markets in capitalism;
outside profit requires regional and local exploitation (Predatory
Capitalism);
4. Appalachia as a colony; absentee ownership; political control and
corruption; and maximum internal profit with minimum internal
benefit (Domestic Colonialism). (pp. 24044)
Lohman layers into this a complicating element of the importance of

localism, which exacerbates problems by creating and reinforcing in-
difference to the values, beliefs and norms of the outside world (2002,
p. 242). Of these four lenses, Lohman argues that twoAppalachian
Culturalism and Domestic Colonialismare unique to understanding
poverty in Appalachia compared to other contexts within the United
States (p. 240). There are also two elements of Lohmans critique that he
believes help to provide greater insight into understanding how we, as a
broader society, view Appalachian poverty. Through the lens of Bureau-

cratic Realism, we tend to view poverty in the region as a result of bad
choices, as the rational result of bad decision making by those in
poverty. As the author sarcastically makes the point held by some: Un-
employed? Then move where the jobs are! (p. 244). Through the lens of
Appalachian Culturalism, we tend to view the culture of the region and
its poverty as a romanticized, developmental experience, moral chal-
lenge. As Lohman observes, Appalachians are viewed as poor, but
happy (p. 244).
Stephen L. Fisher (1993), in his analysis of the intersection of class,
culture, and region, argues that class in and of itself is inadequate to un-
derstanding culture in Appalachia, particularly in the contexts of a long
history of dissent and resistance by poor and working-class citizens to op-
pressive and marginalizing forces. He makes the case that issues such as
tradition, shared values, and shared cultural memory are better
lenses for understanding marginalization in Appalachia than class or eco-
nomic access or income (p. 317). He believes that understanding class
as a basis for resistance needs to be connected to class as a construction
that comes out of family, community, place, and religion, but that is
clearly connected to issues of income and economic access. In other words,
class is as much a cultural phenomenon as it is an economic one.
Fishers work serves to add complexity to our understanding of class
in Appalachia by exposing it as a complex social construction that goes
beyond conditions created by economic factors typically associated with
wealth or poverty. Understanding the way in which class is con-
structed in Appalachia requires that we look into the local, community-
based social networks and structures, histories of political resistance,
local traditions in the ways family relationships are built, and the role of
churches and how religious beliefs are tied to social values. Much of what
may typically assumed to be class solidarity is actually the complex in-
tersections of all of these constructions played out as economic resistance
and as political dissent tied to labor unions and economic struggle. He
cautions that critics and observers of Appalachia and its poor and work-
ing class must be able to understand the borders between the need to pro-
mote new progressive or resistance politics from traditional institutions
such as schools, and the history of racism, sexism, and homophobia that
many believe have been markers in Appalachia culture and history (1993,
p. 327). In what he frames as the neopopulist debate in the region,
Fisher argues that we need to understand that What is needed is a criti-
cal discourse and practice rooted in an awareness of popular traditions
and resistance, but not blind to the wider contours of power within na-
tional and international capital (p. 327). Class in other words, is not
only an Appalachian construct in itself; it is only one element of the
298 Van Dempsey
broader construction of Appalachia as lived and perceived, with the task

being to sort how class conflict in Appalachia is part of the broader cul-
tural and political structures and narratives that people live out. This in-
cludes understanding how the local intersects with the dominant broader
culture, and how it provides a resource in the struggle against the mar-
ginalizing effects of the dominant culture (p. 328). This position is sup-
ported by the work of Alan Banks, Dwight Billings, and Karen Tice
(1993) in their research on political resistance activities in Appalachia
and how it reflects Appalachian culture more broadly. They highlight the
importance of not re-presenting Appalachian culture as a fixed metanar-
rative or the way it really is instead struggling with ways in which to
inscribe people such that their subjecthood is not diffused (p. 296).
In an examination of how class issues play out over time and between
generations, Anna Kraack and Jane Kenway (2002) provide insight into
the complexity of social class, and the deconstruction of class within
class, in their research on intergenerational change in rural communities
during economic transition. Their focus is on the breakdown of working-
class order within class over time, creating an identity of bad boys as
the values and expectations of social behavior change with a new econ-
omy transitioning away from traditional working-class structures. As
economically driven needs shift from those associated with manual labor
and blue-collar work to a softer economy driven by activities such as
tourism and service work, economic activity becomes restructured to re-
define what is considered acceptable and unacceptable behavior by
teenagers and young adults. In the communities that are the basis of their
research, the local economy has been through these transitions, settling
into a new, service-oriented structure, creating a new economic base of
place (p. 147). Their analysis describes how young boys were stripped of
historical resources available locally for identity construction and left
with destructive tensions based in hangover expectations and values from
a different socioeconomic context (pp. 14546).
The authors nest these tensions in differences between the genera-
tions over temporal, spatial, individual and community identities, and the
socioeconomic forces helping to define them. An old economic and social
order is in conflict with the new order, and the younger generation is
caught in shifting structures and redefined expectations. As this transition
settled out in the local communities, the values and expectations about
work ethics and social relationships of the older, working-class genera-
tion did not change to meet the new socioeconomic conditions, but their
expectations for the younger generations values did change, creating in-
tergenerational tensions. For example, the older generation pressures the
younger to hold on to what they see as blue-collar work ethics (i.e., man-
ual labor, working to the clock, routinized schedules, and up and out
early in the day), but there is no longer blue-collar work to do, framed in
those expectations. The older generation subsequently makes value judg-
ments about the younger generation around these assumptions about
work ethics. Feelings of worthlessness among young adults are created as
there is no appropriate work in what has historically been identified as
a working mans town (Kraack and Kenway, 2002, p. 150). Bad be-
havior associated with laziness and idleness (note the Kids Count on
Discounted Youth statistic cited earlier) results as fear of failure pre-
vails among the younger generation. In response, the younger generation
sees leaving the community for broader opportunities as an escape, but si-
multaneously feel pressure to stay and not be a traitor to the local culture
and community. The identification with bad behavior plays out in
many forms. For example, for the older generation, visits to local pubs
after work and blue-collar drinking were seen as part of the culture
and as a process of letting off steam after a hard days work. In the new
economy, such behavior is unwanted by the older generation and by
those invested in different economic opportunities because it clashes with
the image the community wants to present to tourists who come to the
area to spend money. The tourist economy holds no place for loud drink-
ing and rowdy behavior in public places (p. 152). Drinking that was once
expected as part of the class structure is now suppressedby the older
generation and from those benefiting from the new economic realities
as threatening to economic vitality. In response, young people try to
move their letting off steam to places the local citizens dont go, but
that puts them into contact with the tourists who are looking for an
idyllic rural retreat.
In short, the realities of the new economy do not allow for a context
where the old working-class values can be exhibited. There is no work
to do in the old sense, and no acceptable leisure to enjoy as a result.
While there is no context for learning the lessons of hard work, there
is still the expectation that that form of industriousness will be valued.
The younger generation had no contextual basis for learning the value
of hard work in the sense that their fathers had, but they are expected
to practice it nonetheless (Kraack and Kenway, 2002, p. 153). Less re-
spectable soft labor replaced the hard physical labor of the past. The
lingering elements of social and class culture left to the younger genera-
tion impose meanings from a context that doesnt exist anymore, but
the behaviors and values that the older generation wants to sustain are
still demanded. The shifting economy has inscribed new class meanings
in the context of rurality and into the local landscape, at the younger gen-
erations expense. As Kraack and Kenway conclude, The changing
300 Van Dempsey
economic base, the altered demography and the tensions between the tra-
ditional and the different groups of new residents [e.g., retirees and those
connected to new industries like tourism] have profoundly destabilised
the social and cultural character of the township. Difference and insta-
bility have replaced sameness and stability (p. 151).
David Whisnant takes a more philosophical approach to critiquing the
transitions that have come with the introduction (or intrusion, depending on
the perspective) of modern standards into mountain society in Ap-
palachia. His primary concern is with the hegemonic nature of the broader
cultural pressures affecting local culture. He takes the position that the eco-
nomic problems of Appalachia are not technical-rational problems to be
solved with commensurate solutions, but are instead based on cultural as-
sumptions of those imposing technical solutions from the outside. The eco-
nomic problems of Appalachia require examinations that are as complex as
the social structures and cultural contexts in which the problems are em-
bedded (1995, pp. 19293). In his perspective, class in Appalachia plays out
as a cultural drama, not as a technical, social structural process. Any at-
tempt to understand and change in any way, the lives of communities and
groups of people in the region will necessitate an understanding of the cul-
ture of the region, the values and assumptions embedded in the social and
class history and present-day situation of the region, and the ability to ne-
gotiate the social constructions that are part of that history and present.
Moving from broader analyses of schooling in rural America to a
more focused consideration of literacy development, Laura Payne-Bourcy
and Kelly Chandler-Olcott, studying working-class, rural adolescents,
highlight class as cultural as well as economic. The authors argue that be-
cause class issues have been lost in social and political efforts to hide class
in the United States, educators do not consider class as a confounding fac-
tor in schooling (2003, p. 553). As did Duncan (1999), Panelli (2002),
Lohman, (2002), and Fisher (1983) their analysis assumes that social
class structures in rural areas are multifaceted, not monolithic (Payne-
Bourcy and Chandler-Olcott, 2003, p. 560). Payne-Bourcy and Chandler-
Olcott identify numerous ways in which class limits working-class, rural
adolescent in their academic worlds:
Working-class, rural children do not believe that they are capa-

ble of making knowledge;
Working-class, rural children tend to experience more emotional
and psychological separation from parents;
Working-class, rural children do not believe that their parents can
fight for them in the systems and institutions that are supposed
to serve their interests;
Working-class, rural children avoid authority structures and

agents and define themselves in opposition to them. (pp. 55354)
This literature that considers the intersections of class, whiteness, ed-

ucation, and rurality is consistent in drawing attention to the complexity
of class in rural settings. This research also is consistent in spotlighting
the contested role of schooling and education in this context. Brian Mc-
Grath (2001) reflects these themes in his analysis of childrens experiences
in rural settings, using school as one of three contexts for critique (work
and housing being the other two). He argues from a theoretical frame-
work that examines the duality of agency and structure in rural childrens
lives, looking at how young people respond to and reproduce change in
terms situated in available resources as actors in context (p. 485). His
inquiry emerges from the question of what children have at their disposal
as social actors within social structures, and how that plays out for them
as children who mediate, negotiate and interpret their lives (p. 485).
McGrath claims that rural children have two kinds of resources available
to themallocative and authoritativewith critical attention to the au-
thoritative. Allocative resources are those used to build material access
and command and control over the object world. Authoritative resources
are those that we use to organize opportunity and possibility in life as we
construct and negotiate identity. How we exercise authoritative resources
is a matter of the level of capability and capacity (and education is a cen-
tral enabler or limitation to that) (p. 486). McGrath argues that a critical
issue in identity construction is how the interplay of agency and structure
plays out in rural contexts vis--vis class and education. How these au-
thoritative resources are shaped through social relationships and prac-
tices influence childrens capacity for agency: how do children act and
what choices do/can they make (p. 486)?
Education exists as an authoritative resource because it (1) institu-
tionalizes opportunity and limitation, (2) provides an arena for control,
(3) regulates childrens behavior, and (4) limits the sense of options in a
limited economy (McGrath, 2001, p. 492). McGrath counts education as
an authoritative resource, as he examines why rural students opt out of
school as a potential resource and source of opportunity. He cites four
reasons: (1) negative teacher pupil relationships, (2) bullying within
the social group, (3) lack of intellectual and social support in school-
ing, and (4) students who see the qualifications required in school as ir-
relevant to their futures (p. 490). In essence, in a context of economic
restructuring, schooling often fails to be one of the resources at rural
youths disposal, and provides limited capacity for enabling of possibil-
ity and choice.
302 Van Dempsey
Shades of White
Karen Anijar (2001), in an examination of education in rural America as-
serts that . . . discourse only happens in the spaces where you can be
heard (p. 241). As rural and Appalachian youths negotiate the con-
struction of their identities in the social, class, race, and geographic
spaces to which they have access, there are multiple critical questions that
must heard. What do rural and Appalachia youths hear in the discourses
around them, in the ones that the broader culture offers to or imposes on
them, and what do we hear from youths in their negotiations? One clear
element of that discourse is the white noise that provides background
and foreground to the discourses. Anijar contends that these students are
aware (at least in its impacts) of the intersections of race, sex, politics,
and localism with class in the representations in available discourses, par-
ticularly as they relate to schooling. And, they are aware of how these
other elements tend to obscure class within their broader experiences as
poor, working-class, rural, and/or Appalachian culture bearers (p. 251).
In particular for rural children, class is bound up in place; children see
how race can hide the noise of class that would otherwise be heard more
clearly (p. 253). The students Anijar studied exhibited an awareness of
how their own culture and language were not represented in an explicit
way in the curriculum used in schools, and how language valued in
schools tended to marginalize their local language use.
This emerging tacit silencing of discourse on class is evident in an au-
tobiographical sketch of Roxanne A. Dunbars (1997) own experience as
a poor white child who transitioned into the middle class. Dunbar de-
scribes the struggles and tensions of being from a poor white community
and all the stereotypes and prejudices (ignorance, lack of education, and
caricatures of familial and social networks) about people from poverty
that can entail, and moving on as an adult to membership in the middle
class as an educated professional and by marriage. She writes from the
standpoint of a person who has betrayed her poor white background
by taking on the values of more privileged classes (i.e., getting beyond
ones raising), and with the experiential knowledge of a white person
who sees white privilege from her background. As she reflects on her life
experiences that have become, in reflection, both enabling and wrought
with stress, she asserts, Poor rural whites (the original white trash) have
lived by dreams, at least the ones I come from did and, in a perverse way,
still do, albeit reacting to broken dreams (pp. 7475). Moving on, by
her own analysis, from much of the baggage that our culture attaches to
poor whites, she still struggles with where she is going and where she left
to go to. She identifies herself as a class traitor, betraying class through
her personal experiences and schooling success and leaving behind the
contexts and conditions of poverty and working-class life that were her
early and primary experiences. She is caught in the imbalance of being
pushed out, pulled back, and wanting to claim elements of both (p. 85).
Dunbars thesis brings us to a critical component of understanding
how class and race in rural and Appalachian communities and contexts is
connected to broader marginalization in ways connected to race, ethnic-
ity, and gender. The invisibility of white poverty as a critical social prob-
lem is masked, according to Dunbar, by giving limited access to economic
opportunity to poor whites in roles in service (literally) to the more priv-
ileged white classes. As a social critic, she offers the following analysis of
poor and working-class whites in these contexts:
We dregs of colonialism, those who did not and do not make it,
being the majority in some places (like most of the United States) are po-
tentially dangerous to the ruling class: WE ARE THE PROOF OF THE
LIE OF THE AMERICAN DREAM. However, self-blame, a sprinkling
of white-skin privilege with license to violence against minorities, scape-
goating, and serving as cops and in the military (give them a gun and
point to the enemy) conspire to neutralize or redirect our anger. But
above all its that dream and the ideology, the sacred origin myth
the religion of Americanismwhich keeps us doped and harmless,
that and alcohol and drugs and cheap consumer items, especially sex
and violence. But without the dream/ideology none of the other tricks
would work. (1997, pp. 7677)
Poor whites are held down; those who make it are poor whites who
achieved or took advantage of the opportunities presented to them, and
those who dont, constitute the trash. The problem is not in the mythol-
ogy of success and opportunity; it is in the failures of the losers. Dunbars
point draws the critical line where the real, surreal, and unreal meet in
understanding class and raceat least as whitenessin rural American
and Appalachia in particular. Horace Newcomb (1995) draws this dis-
tinction in region, geography, history, and myth, at least in Appalachia.
His critique of representations of poor Appalachians calls into question
the representation of Appalachian culture by researchers, cultural ob-
servers, and others external to the context, suggesting that many of our
images of the regions poor whites are more a landscape of the mind than
one of real life in a geographic region. Much of what we as a broader cul-
ture believe Appalachia to be is more a monolithic representation
driven by the surreal images of fictional constructs than by the complex
narratives of the region (p. 317).
Many common slurs and slams are used to compartmentalize carica-
tures and stereotypes of poor and working-class whites with rural and Ap-
palachian identities, including redneck, briar hopper, clodhopper,
304 Van Dempsey
white trash, and hillbilly. Many social critics, writers, and researchers
focus on the use of white trash as a way in which poor whiteness is
framed in rural communities and in Appalachia. According to Analee
Newitz and Matt Wray (1997), white trash is racialized (whiteness),
classed (waste, detritus, and throwaway), and hybridized (race and class),
while white is marked out with the underclass as a social class
(p. 4). White trash as a construction helps to unpack issues of race, exposes
the degree to which class in rural and Appalachia contexts is complex as
typically framed, and illuminates our ability to understand social relation-
ships around class and social power (p. 4). The label helps us to examine
class identity and how we construct it with race and region, the material
conditions of poverty, and the divisions in racial and nonracial communi-
ties (p. 8). White trash as a social and class construction helps to localize
and specify constructions of whiteness, in particular, social and class dis-
tinctions among whites as a group (p. 9).
White trash as a construction allows for an outlet for explaining
how race or ethnicity really can be the basis for class conditions, by cre-
ating a class of whites who do not belong to the privileged or on-their-
way to privileged classes. White trash as a class group becomes a buffer.
This is particularly critical in an area where there are few people of color
on whom to blame economic or political segregation, or where large
numbers of whites in poverty need to be explained as something other
than a failure of capitalism.
Pem Davidson Buck (2001) makes similar arguments as to the po-
tential benefit to come from an analysis of how we use white trash as a
label and framing element of class. Buck argues that understanding how
we construct white trash as a category helps to unpack the economic im-
pact on the current middle class that has been caused by economic re-
structuring and globalization. This impact on the middle class, Buck
claims, is parallel to what has been experienced by poor and working
class rural and Appalachian whites for decades. Whiteness no longer
provides protection from the consequences of policies that make larger
and larger portions of the United States into a Third World labor force.
Nor does middle-class status provide complete protection. The results are
similar to those of the 1920s and 1930s in the United States . . . when the
middle class began losing privileges as a result of intense competition
among national elites. As usual, when faced with widespread anger at
their policies, the elite has been encouraging nativist, exclusionary reac-
tions to facilitate divide and rule (p. 222).
Buck couches this critique in what she sees as . . . the pervasiveness
of the propaganda that blames people at the bottom of the drainage sys-
tem for the loss of security being felt by people slightly higher, a security
they once felt was theirs by virtue of white privilege and male privilege
(2001, p. 222). The economic exploitation of poor and working-class

whites threatens the illusion of whiteness that is necessary for ex-
ploitation of racially identified ethnic groups. If there are larger numbers
of poor whites, race cant be leveraged as easily for blame for a host of
social ills. As more working-class and middle-class whites face economic
deterioration, it becomes harder for elites to use race and poor as a
mechanism for exploitation (p. 223). The necessary backlash calls for the
creation of images that allow for the marginalization of people on some
grounds other than race, so a new group of whites is created to justify the
exclusionary tactics. Whites have to other whites; whites have to fade
into other shades of whiteness to protect whites with privilege. White
trash becomes the point of departure for reclassification of the white un-
derclass (pp. 22223).
Newitzs analysis of white trash constructions is consistent with the
claim that the identification serves to exploit poor and working-class
rural and Appalachian whites for the purposes of exploitation. According
to Newitz, white trash as an identification, emerged as a way to differ-
entiate segments of the white population from segments that wished to
maintain the ability to exercise power. White trash makes whites in the
group visible because of their being poor in ways that set them off from
the rest of the whites. Newitz argues that this is done by making poor
whites seem monstrously poor and appear in the popular culture as im-
ages that terrorize the middle class. Class difference among whites is
presented as differences in civility and being civilized (or not) (1997,
p. 134). Newitz extends this critique to address the ways in which poor
whites in rural areas and in Appalachia are presented as images in film
and in the media, where white trash is positioned in ways that allow mid-
dle-class and privileged whites to resolve their racial problems without
having to do it through racial and ethnic terms (p. 139). (One can mar-
ginalize a group as the source of the problem without taking on the iden-
tity of a racist.) Typically in these images and narratives, whites (other
than white trash) have to turn on white trash because they are forced to;
in essence, the white trash was asking for it and those in the middle
class have to defend themselves (p. 144). Middle-class whites are actually
the victims in the mythology of white trash; white trash has divided the
race, and the other classes are just trying to survive the threats.
This image is played out time and time again in movies where unsus-
pecting whites find themselves embattled by caricatures of white trash,
such as Deliverance, Wrong Turn, and Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
Newitz (1997) captures the process of representation this way:
Ultimately, whites in poverty make a perfect target for displaced white

racist aggression, for one can denigrate them but avoid feeling like or even
306 Van Dempsey
being called racist. Furthermore, the idea that poverty is primitive

shores up many of the most cherished beliefs of a capitalistand imperial-
istculture. First, it confirms the idea that those who are mature, and
hence deserving, always achieve upper or middle-class status. And sec-
ondly, it undergirds a myth of economic progress, in which the devel-
oped First World is naturally superior to the undeveloped Third World; or,
likewise, upper- or middle-class people in the First World should lead
their urban and rural poor. As savage Others, poor whites in the U.S. and
abroad become unruly children who need discipline, strict boundaries, and
(coercive) guidance from the upper classes. And as the savagely humiliated,
the upper classes are absolved of guilteither by directly engaging in class
combat, or by consuming images of white self-punishment at the movies,
on TV and radio, and in social criticism. (p. 152)
Anthony Harkins (2004) focuses specifically on the image of the hill-

billy and the way it is portrayed in the media and popular culture. Harkins
discusses the recent attempt by a major television network to create and air
a realty show that would put on a public stage in Beverly Hills a hillbilly
family from West Virginia. This life imitating entertainment imitating life
(the original being the 1960s television show, The Beverly Hillbillies) was an
effort by the network to put a poor, white, Appalachian family in the con-
text of wealth and privilege in the same vein as the fictional Clampett fam-
ily. After significant backlash from citizens, some media outlets including
news and entertainment, and political leaders at the state and national level,
the show was scrapped before being aired. While some critics panned the at-
tempted show as socially demeaning and exploitative, some media observers
explicated their own inability to see the complexity of the rural and Ap-
palachian poor and working class. One media critic, cited in Harkins analy-
sis, argued that the show would never air or work because the network
would never air a real Appalachian family. According to Harkins, the
backhanded commentary gave this assessment:
Yet confirming regional critics worst fears . . . reporters have also

used the chance to question the shows motive to trot out demeaning
stereotypes largely formed by earlier media depictions of the hillbilly as
both monster and dirt-poor fool. For example . . . the show [according
to one critic] could not possibly be realistic for the network would not
dare show the mountaineer family as it really would berabidly Pente-
costal, anti-Semitic, violently homophobic, and interested only in sex
and drugs. More in keeping with earlier comedic depictions, a story in
E! Online News called on would-be applicants to brush your tooth
and warned that livestock would not be counted as a member of the
multigenerational family. The article also questioned the efficacy of
CBSs hotline to field calls from applicants because there is no word on
how many members of the Deliverance set have phones. (p. 225)
Both wayswell-meaning critics or media-driven caricatures

Appalachias poor and working class lose. The hillbilly image, Harkins
concludes, is a way for mainstream American culture to position rural
and Appalachian counterparts to afford power and privilege to itself
(2004, p. 226).
Conclusion
Understanding class in Appalachia and in other rural places requires trav-
eling through a complex intersection of race, gender, and class and place.
To make the point most succinctly, rural places matter. To understand
class in rural places is to understand the role of political and social geog-
raphy as a complicating factor in peoples lives, in terms of how social
and political spheres are created and work in places with geographically
isolated populations, low tax bases, and rurally based social networks.
Also, economic development, and therefore economic opportunity, is a
much different process in rural places than that found in suburban and
urban places. This is particularly true in Appalachia, where topography
plays a dominant role in access to places, moving from place to place, and
defining the spatial limits within which people live their lives. These fac-
tors, coupled with the difficulty of economic development beyond ex-
tractive industries such as coal, gas, and timber highlight the chronic
issues of poverty, economic disadvantage, the difficulty of creating public
resources to offer institutional and public agency support, and high qual-
ity, well-funded public schools. (It should not be ignored that low-wage
labor and cheap, low-tax natural resources do serve the interest of cor-
porate, suburban, and urban America.) This alone would represent a
daunting challenge for breaking down class barriers on a systemic scale;
add in the complicating factors of historical (and sometimes current) in-
stitutional corruption and destructive, local micro-politics, and public
and service institutions can fail to be or appear to be sources of help
at all.
Finally, Appalachia offers more visibly and explicitly a class-based
narrative about the broader culture in general, relative to issues of class in
the United States. Appalachia powerfully illustrates the intersections of
economics and identity politics as elements of class in this country. Con-
structions around white trash, rednecks, hillbillies, and others
that create white within white social structures, marginalize rural and
Appalachian whites and give energy to agendas that blame the victim
and make class issues tied to poverty a part of life in these places, in some
cases something they really want or they would do something about it.
This is not to suggest that all economic limitations in these places are un-
changeable or not in some ways due to social and political conditions
308 Van Dempsey
that have been created from within. As a poignant example, the dream
and promise of education for young people is juxtaposed with a strong
culturally based pressure to tie oneself to place. The pushing and
pulling of young people in rural and Appalachian places, in particular
for those in poverty and working-class contexts, is the critical illustration
of the complexity of class in rural and Appalachian America.
Schools, schooling, and educationlike any other element of life in
rurality and in Appalachiaare as much constructs as tools for cultural
construction. Schools in particular in rural and Appalachian places are
critical institutions that can create possibilities or opportunities as well as
barriers and obstacles. In many ways schools are actually counterweights
in that they represent on the local level much of the gateway out of rural-
ity that so much local culture works against. (The more educated one be-
comes, the more likely they are to leave to be seen as traitors to the local
culture.) The centralizing claim about schooling as enunciated by Duncan
only works if schools can get beyond the historically corrupting tenden-
cies of local control. Duncans claim about schools does not take into
consideration the problem that the identities that have become so closely
tied to poverty and lack of economic opportunity in Appalachia are in a
significant way externally imposed. Duncans treatment of schools actu-
ally contradicts many of her important claims about the complexity of
rural and Appalachian culture in general. Schools are a complex element
of complex cultures, and are institutional subjects as well as objects of
change. Finally, Duncans claims do not appear to incorporate in a criti-
cal way the phenomenon that many students in Appalachia experience
in particular, teenagers and high school graduatesof being pulled
back by community and family expectations that to leave is to dishonor
local values and place. Given these last two points, many of Appalachias
children are held back by internal value structures and expectations, and
are pushed back by external assumptions, caricatures, and media and
popular culture pressures.
Whiteout travel conditions in snow are a well-known weather phe-
nomenon to people who live in Appalachia, particularly in the higher
landscapes of central Appalachia. In a whiteout, snow is so intense and
the wind turbulent enough that the background becomes uniform and
distinctions cannot be seen in the road. It essence, it appears that there is
no background or foregroundno dimensionalityto the road. The sit-
uation creates hazards and dangers for travelers because they lose per-
spective and depth about what is around them, and cannot see the
complexities of the terrain around them. All of the potential resources
and securities laid out before the travelers are lost in the one-dimensional
picture left out front; the hazards and potential risks made all the more
threatening by the inability to negotiate the complexity of the path.
Whiteouts are further complicated by a looming silence that typically ac-

companies this weather conditions, the usual noise and commotion of ne-
gotiated traffic silenced by the seemingly quaint effect of snowfall and
apparently less traffic.
This element of life in the mountains of Appalachia provides an apt
metaphor for understanding the complexities of whiteness in the cul-
ture of the region and in the way in which the region is viewed and inter-
preted by those outside it. Whiteness in Appalachia and in rural places in
general, is not a one shade fits all identity construction. It cannot be
used as an all-encompassing, totalizing construct to understand culture in
rural and Appalachian places, and it must be confounded by issues of
class. Rather, it is one of white-within-white, with varying shades and
layers both constructed within the negotiations of identity in place and
imposed and coerced through the mythology and impositions of broader
cultural negotiations. There is an important paradox in this intersection.
On the one hand, the negotiation of whiteness and class in Appalachia
and in rural America is limited by the tendency to treat it as monolithic
and/or invisible. From this perspective, distinctions in whiteness and how
it is negotiated are treated as not so different from whiteness and class
writ large, so it therefore requires suggests no particular analysis, critique,
or even research in its own right. White is white, and the focus on un-
derstanding the intersection of class with other elements of identity is put
on other places in suburban and in urban America. On the other hand,
when whiteness in a rural place such as Appalachia is highlighted, it is
too often done so to marginalize, fantasize, and mythologize, many times
to justify exploitation and marginalization from the privileged and elite
layers and shades of whiteness. In essenceand literally no pun in-
tendedthe caricatures and distortions created separate the dulled and
faded shades of white from the bright whites. Many issues behind the ne-
gotiated identities of rural and Appalachian places provide a backdrop to
this imagery. In West Virginia, for example, citizens struggle with the no-
win choices of housing the nations federal prisons and opening the land-
scape for toxic landfills to provide jobs, and scrapping off mountaintops
to provide energy in the era of escalating oil and natural gas prices. The
broader society literally throws away its human and material castoffs
into the countrys backyard and hauling off its valuables, all the while
painting a picture that attempts to justify that it was the right place to do
it because it is a place that has done it to itself historically. Valuable re-
sourceshuman and materialleave and are taken because they need to
or are needed and taken elsewhere, creating and leaving behind the dust
and debris to make the place dirty for our cultural conveniences, and cre-
ating the contexts used to color in the shades of white that underlie the
marginalization that suits the broader society. Finally, many times those
310 Van Dempsey
who claim those places as home and who are tied to place, exacerbate the
problems by becoming implicated in the process or by taking advantage
of what they may see as the last measure of opportunity that does not
require self-selected expatriation.
Appalachia and rural America, like other cultural contexts, deserves a
richer perspective on the complexities of the intersections of race and
class, and how identity around class is constructed in those contexts. It can
neither be totalized as the textureless veneer of an intersection of white
and class that masks the negotiated meaning of place, nor can it be left
to the simplistic twist of white-on-white marginalization when drawing out
mythologized distinctions that privileges one imaginary shade over an-
other. We have to understand the dangers and pitfalls of both, and recog-
nize the noise and contestation of the intersection of whiteness and class in
the backyards of Americas urban and suburban places.
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12
CLASSDCLASS
George W. Noblit
This book is devoted to a rethinking of social class in education. The other

authors offer perspectives on how social class is useful, and in what ways,
for understanding how education works to produce a stratified population
both within schools and in the wider society. As coeditor of this volume, I
have read and reread these pieces many times and find them all compelling
if in rather different ways. Yet when the authors of the chapters in this vol-
ume began this discussion several years ago, we were compelled by how
the new understandings of race and gender made social class (of the tril-
ogy: race, class, and gender) seem, well, dclass. Neither academics nor
those they studied were using it as an analytic category. In part, this is be-
cause the concept of social class had been captured twice: once by Karl
Marx and once by status attainment studies (Aronowitz, 2003). It re-
mained central in neo-Marxist critical theories if only to be challenged by
feminist and critical race theories. Social class also remained embedded in
the abstracted empiricism of status attainment studies (Karabel and
Halsey, 1977). Creating a conception of class that might reengage both so-
cial science and public discourse meant that we, as authors, had to do so
in the context of these competing conceptions of class. Nevertheless, we
realized that we had to also imagine beyond these existing formulations of
class if we were to address the failure of class:
. . . class is a largely absent category in American public, private or

scholarly discourse. Its elision is due in part to the lingering legacy of the
Red Menace, Marx and the Evil Empire, but also to shared beliefs that
(almost) everyone is middle class and only a residual category of non-
persons qualify as the underclass. Class in the American context is
seen primarily as the product and consequence of individual enterprise
313
314 George W. Noblit
rather than that of a complexly configured historical, social and politi-

cal economic location. The lack of class analysis also is attributed to
American exceptionalism as defined by the absence of a strong labour
movement or socialist party. . . . (Ferguson and Golding, 1997, p. xvi)
Class analysis also has had its problems in England as well. As Mar-
garet Somers (1997, pp. 7374) writes:
Was there a class struggle in the industrial revolution? The questions re-
main unresolved. . . . Indeed why the peculiarities of the English? has
been an intellectual complaint since the birth of the theory of class. Para-
doxically, however, the yardstick used to measure the English working
class and find it peculiar was constructed by classical sociological con-
ceptions of class formation for which English working people served as the
putative historical model. Surely something is amiss when the original his-
torical actors whose lives were appropriated for a theoretical schema of
class formation are subsequently judged deviant by that same theory.
Regardless of the interpretive and theoretical problems with class,

many theorists, including ourselves, realize that social class affected our
lives. At one point, theorists collectively reasserted the race, class, and
gender trilogy with the clumsy phrase: the nonsynchronist parallelist po-
sition (McCarthey and Apple, 1988). This assertion was to signal the
move away from the sense that class was the ultimate category, that all
difference was reducible, in some senses, to an economically structured
stratification. In this phrase we wished to signal that class continued to
work both analytically and in the lives of people, but also to signal the
lesson from critical race and feminist studies, that race and gender could
not be reduced to social class analytically. Each contributed something
unique and all worked together to mark and construct status and relative
power in the United States. Ultimately, however, this reassertion of the
trilogy was unsatisfactory because it did not reinvigorate the conception
of social class. Something was terribly wrong with how we thought about
social class and many began working on rethinking the concept (i.e.,
Aronowitz, 2003; Hall, 1997. Mahony and Zmroczek, 1997. Walker-
dine, 1990; Wright, 1987). Patrick Joyce (1997, p. xi) in his forward to
the Hall volume argued that the collections of essays . . . resuscitates a
concept that was almost dead. While this is surely hyperbole, it does
demonstrate that there is much to be done. Perhaps more dramatically,
Stanley Aronowitz (2003, p. 1) describes the response to his recent work:
When I tell friends that I have written a book on class, especially class
in the United States, the news is received with either incredulity or cheer-
Class-Dclass 315
leading. The postsliberals and postmodernistsquestion whether

the concept is still useful and often suggest I use another term. If they ac-
knowledge the salience of class at all in these times, most relegate it to a
narrativeone of the stories Americans tell about historyor a figure
of vernacular speech. The other response is gratitude that someone is (fi-
nally) going to blast the myth of American classlessness and its contem-
porary displacement, stratification. Stratification designates distinction
without conflict. Those who replace class with strata deny that society
is propelled by social struggles; for the stratification theorists, people are
arranged along a social grid by occupation or income. The category is
merely descriptive of status and differential opportunities for jobs and
goods. Enthusiasts are frequently outraged that any intelligent social
thinker can fail to observe the obvious signs of class difference, espe-
cially the ample evidence that at the political level the U.S. democratic
system retains considerable deference to money and its bearers in the de-
termination of social and economic policy. Plainly there is no longer
agreement that the concept of class tells us anything about how social
structure or history is constituted.
This paragraph names many of contending schools of thought at play

in the reconceptualization of class, but in doing so understates the actual
complexity of current thinking about social class. For example, the posts
are not a school but rather a set of contending schoolspostmodernism
and poststructuralism being but two of them. They may both question the
usefulness of class analysis but the latters insistence that power permeates
society and the formers focus on social life as narrative makes their per-
spectives more incommensurate than Aronowitz acknowledges. On the
other hand, those who wish to reassert the salience of class in the United
States are similarly varied. Some are essentially trying to reassert Marxist
or neo-Marxist perspectives as the correct analysis while others are vexed
by the the fin de sicle redistribution of wealth that began with President
Ronald Reagans presidency and continues through today. The latter assert
that in the context of global capitalism the United States is now only a two-
class society. Marxist thought, then, would be only a starting place rather
than the end of the deliberation. Finally, the stratification theorists have
been challenged by recent work conceptualizing class not as distinct eco-
nomic categegories but as a continuum in which boundaries between high
and lower status positions are increasingly blurred. Furthermore, some
of this recent research also has undercut the notion that the United States
is a meritocracy that was central to early status attainment researchers
(Hallinan, 2000). All this is to say that while there is agreement that class
needs to be rethought, there are a host of perspectives on how that might
be redone.
We should also learn from Aronowitz (2003) that what seems to be

called for is not the reassertion of existing perspectives but the reconsid-
eration of these perspectives. He writes (pp. 12): Unfortunately this
book may give little comfort to those who defend the received wisdom
about class and class struggles. . . . For them people like me are apostates.
To this state of being I plead guilty. I remain loyal to the questions posed
by the founders of historical materialism and to their reliance on history
to provide solutions to vexing problems of power. But it cannot be true
that the answers are immutable. I want to embrace the spirit that
Aronowitz signals here, even if I want to go further with it. Aronowitzs
(2003, p. 52) approach allows him to shift the focus from class struggle
to class formation and thus to embrace social movements: Genuine so-
cial movements are struggles over class formation when they pose new
questions concerning the conduct of institutional and everyday life and
entail new arrangements. Genuine social movements, for Aronowitz, re-
configure the power situation (p. 53) in terms of . . . who constructs
the rules of inclusion and exclusion in institutional and social life; who
tells the story of past and present, what Antonio Gramsci calls common
sense; and who has the power to define the future (p. 53). I find much of
this of interest even as I note that embracing social movements has long
been championed by poststructuralists (see Wexler, 1987) and the focus
on the narration of life is quintessentially postmodern. That is to say,
Aronowitz seems to offer a synthesis of prevailing critical perspectives.
To my way of thinking, we need a host of approaches to break the
conceptual logjam about social class: syntheses, reassertions, critiques, in-
depth studies, and thought experiments. In this chapter, my focus is on
one way in which we might break the conceptual logjam. I will do so by
doing the unthinkablereversing the isnt it all just class anyway logic
of liberal thought. I will argue that we should consider the implications of
reducing class to race and do so not as a statement of empirical real-
ity, but rather as a strategy to reveal the hegemonic forces that have dis-
tanced the concept and experience of class from political traction.
This project is, of course, full of pitfalls that must be acknowledged.
First, it is focused on the theoretical idea of social class. It is an exercise
in the sociology of knowledgeexamining social class as a reified reality.
John Hall (1997), in Reworking Class, argues that the end of class as a
historical subject is a failure of ideas. He concludes that the materialist
dialectical model of capitalism development is being replaced with the
view that the many social struggles over material and ideal, social and
cultural interests that do not always look like the surface manifestations
of a dialectical class struggle (p. 7). He also argues that the the decon-
struction of class as a theoretical object (p. 7) emerges as part of the re-
Class-Dclass 317
cent economic and political transformations within and between nations

and the postmodern crisis of knowledge (p. 15), which has resulted in
contingently historical and discursive analyses of classes (p. 15). Hall
argues that the discrediting of social theory of class itself is actually a fail-
ure to theorize in nonstructuralist ways (p. 15). That Hall wishes to re-
turn to Weberian analyses and toward the institutional school of thought
is of less interest to me, although in what follows I will, in part, call upon
such traditions. Ultimately, the project requires a reimagining in which
returning to classic theory or to existing schools of thought will only be
of partial use.
Second, if class is dclass in social theory, then the project here is
marked by filling a void. This void must be carefully circumscribed if we
are to try to explore ways of filling it. In the next section, I will begin this
project by taking on the reality of class. My argument is that class is d-
class because for too long, social theorists had insisted that it is objec-
tively real. The failure of working people to behave in ways in which class
theory requires, forces us to admit that materiality is insufficient for class
to be constructed as objectively real. We may wish to temper our theo-
rizing in this vein in an effort to create the possibilities for strategic ac-
tion. Moreover, part of this is also to ask how we can help everyday
people understand how social reality gets constructed and to whose ben-
efit. This is not only to be able to effectively strategize for action but also
to reconceprtualize power itself.
Third, the persistent existence of inequality in the United States is full
of evidence that there are important differences that must be dealt with.
As Maike Philipsen in this volume argues, we have more and more peo-
ple living in poverty. Her project of working with the non-poor to realize
that we create and benefit from the poor resonates with me. Yet saying
this and actually getting those who benefit from a state of affairs to
change seems to be a daunting project in itself. It may well require a coali-
tion from which what we call the social classes can emerge, and this as
a strategy will require more imagination than empiricism. This will be the
basis on the strategy I embrace here. By reducing class to race we may
be able to achieve such a coalition around what Lani Guinier and Gerald
Torres (2002, p. 10) term political race. Their project is to create coali-
tions that reach across differences while maintaining differences at least
in some respects.
Finally, class as dclass does not mean that we will not return to
class. In fact, I will argue that the way to get to class at this point in his-
tory is by reducing it from its earlier historical dominance as a category
(isnt it all class anyway?) to one of the explanations of oppression, and
a complex, all too subjective one at that. This means that I will, in the end
of the chapter, return to class as one vector in intersectionality (Cren-

shaw, 1991). I have chosen political race as my strategy because it will
reveal that race is not the sum total of ones identity nor the only category
used to subjugate. From race we have learned that what must be changed
is whiteness, from gender we have learned that what must be changed is
patriarchy, and from class I will argue that we learn that what must be
changed is hierarchy. In the end, class analysis and action should not be
primarily targeted toward revealing the problems of the lower classes or
the ways in which the middle classes try to shore up their imperiled ad-
vantage (Brantlinger, 2003; Erhenriech, 1989). Rather, the project is to
reveal how hierarchy is created and how we learn from this process while
creating a new definition of powerpower with (Guinier and Torres,
2002, p. 141). We must return to class by doing more than name itwe
must also name that which must be changed.
Class as Material Reality
John Meyers Critique

I grew up working class, and was an active participant in all of the so-
cial problems that we have historically associated with lower-class exis-
tence: crime, single-parent families, gangs, and so on. I still live with these
in many ways. They are and were real for me, and they were real to our
neighborhood, the schools, and the police force. Yet I want to argue that
social theory has given class a weight it cannot bear. By making it a cen-
tral trope in social theory we have pulled it out of existence and into our
intellectual projects. It is time to return class to everyday lifeto unmask
its seeming reality and materiality. Class must be understood as a prod-
uct of human life and interpretation. In what follows, I will use two cri-
tiques of the reality of class, one by John Meyer and one by Pierre
Bourdieu, to help define the void that must be filled if class is dclass.
Defining this void then will outline what is needed in way of strategic ac-
tionin effect, leading to reimagining what struggles may have traction
in our current era.
Meyer (1994), in reviewing a set of chapters on social stratification,
started his commentary by noting that those who study stratification tend
to do so from a realist vein (p. 730). This, in turn, led him to argue
that, regardless of theoretical approach, stratification studies nearly all
share a vision of society as a system made up of interdependent parts
a view rooted in a realist vision of modern society as a functioning sys-
tem (p. 730). While those more rooted in a Marxist perspective may
wish to deny this, it is clear that Marxism has its own version of func-
tionalism stressing the role of elites and economic forces. Meyer argues:
Class-Dclass 319
The story is a standard sociological one, told with varying emphases on

conflict and consensus; it is also very similar to the stories modern soci-
eties tell about themselves (p. 730). His point is that stratification the-
ories are as much products of modern societies as independent
explanationscultural products. Meyer is arguing that we have mistaken
for an explanation what is actually a central myth of modernity. That is,
our understanding of class is not outside of cultural assumptions but
rather an expression of it. Our theories are constitutive of our society.
Thus the claims of the reality or materiality of class do not unpack the as-
sumptions and hierarchies of modern societies but rather are part of pro-
ducing class as we know it. He in turn offers an alternative to realistic
portrayals of stratification, arguing that modern societies themselves are
cultural accomplishments and stratification is highly constructedas
the product of meaning and interpretation in modern schemes and
scripts (p. 731). Moreover, the status accorded to groups arise from
cultural ideologies (which in the modern world commonly take the form
of functional theories) as much as from real interactive dominance and
dependence (p. 731). That is, stratification is ideological hegemony
and real in this sense primarily.
Meyer argues that because stratification theorists underplay culture
they misunderstand the place of the theories and analyses they generate. He
writes: Stratification theorists may understate the importance of the cul-
tures of modern systems because stratification theories (though not neces-
sarily only narrowly academic ones) are the central cultural elements
involved. Recognizing the cultural character of stratification would weaken
the realist vision of society as a real system. It would also undercut some
of the scientific claims of stratification theorists: If stratification is cultural
theory, the theorists (as classic phenomenological critics have had it) are
studying themselves. (1994, pp. 73132; emphases in the original)
For Meyer, stratification theories are central elements of modern
cultures. He notes the irony of seeing stratification theories of premodern
societies as cultural constructions while we fail to do so for our own
societies. He offers two cultural principles (1994, p. 733) built into
modern cultures that enable the extant understanding of class and strati-
fication. First is the principle that societies are systems and thus
only functional considerations can justify inequality. The theories offer
critiques that are of the essential form that specific inequalities are not
functional, either by opposing achievement with ascription or with le-
gitimate achievement against power (p. 733). Second is the principle of
moral individualism (p. 733). In this, individuals are regarded as equal
and justice is determined by the relative equality of individuals. In the
analyses of stratification, individual income equality, trumps analyses, if
done, of groups.
For Meyer, these principles are contained in the cultures of modern

societies. The first principle of society as a system is implicated in the the-
ory of progress that in many ways defined modernity. This theory of
progress also has an ideology of rationalism within it: . . . rationalistic
and progressive ideas have played a role in supporting a great deal of
modern social differentiation. Activities can be pulled out of social life
and bundled into rationalized elements or roles; their inequalities are thus
justified (1994, p. 734). Thus, occupations are constructed by the ideol-
ogy of rationalism as is our understanding of their relative status. . . . Yet
instead of accepting a functionalist view that modern societies require
specific forms of stratification, Meyer argues that a better explanation is
to see . . . the cultural (functional) theories of modernity as widespread
and as generating a good deal of stratificational isomorphism (p. 734).
Indeed, education becomes central to modern stratification not because it
provides needed skills (as is argued by stratification theory) but because
. . . the myths of rational progress have made educational institutions
culturally central (p. 734).
The principle of individualism in stratification theory also has had
important effects. It has led to stratification theorists largely ignoring
how the status as citizen is a key dimension of social differentiation. That
is, nationally and internationally individuals are not equal in access to na-
tion-state resources that come with being a recognized member of the na-
tion-state. The ideology of individualism also justifies the expansion of
education under the guise of developing human capital. The contradic-
tion is that Not only is education the crucial certifier of inequality, but
mass education is a most important constructor of equality as well
(p. 735). With the myth of individualism, we miss the dilemmas built into
our educational systems.
Finally, ideologies of individual equality have also led to the devel-
opment of professions and organizations designed to protect the vulner-
able, including the young and aged. Education as an institution thus
embodies modern myths in central ways.
Conjointly, the ideologies of rational progress and individualism,
in Meyers analysis, also generate considerable role differentiation in
modern societies, which in turn sustains functional myths that work is
defined by social tasks rather than by status, and that roles are distinct
from persons within them. The significance of class differences, therefore,
is downplayed in public discourse and in scholarly analyses because
they do not give real people purchase on their lives. This is true even as
differentiation permits increasingly equal individuals in a system of in-
creasingly unequal and ordered activities (p. 736). The functionalist sep-
aration of role and person allows us to limit analyses of differences in
income, for example, to comparisons of individual pay for the work they
Class-Dclass 321
perform, while ignoring the fact that those who run organizations also
have access to wealth and power well beyond their official income.
Meyers argument, then, is that stratification, as we understand it in
theory and in life, is based on the culture of modernity and on its ideo-
logical bases rather than having an independent, real or material, basis.
That is, people have real differences in what is possible in their lives but
class theories fail to capture them in ways that theorists or everyday peo-
ple find useful to either unpack or change the life situations of the poor.
Worse, social theorists and analysts are key cultural workers in the main-
tenance of the culture of modernity and of its presumptions of rational-
ism, progress, and individualism. Work in stratification theoryeven
that which critiques stratificationresults in the conception that stratifi-
cation is a fact of life and that some differentiation is justifiable and
others not so. In the end, academic protestations about inequalities end
up justifying social differentiation.
Some may wish to argue that this decertification of realism is debilitat-
ingthat class analysis is not possible because we cannot escape our cul-
tural assumptions. Yet Meyers analysis shows that this is an overstatement.
The actual debilitating argument is to the assertion that class has an objec-
tive existence beyond that constructed by humans. Moreover, it is clear
that Meyer is arguing that a constructed notion of class is, to paraphrase
W. I. Thomas (Merton, 1957, p. 421), real in its consequences. Myths
and ideologies work in the social world precisely because they are interpre-
tive schemes that make sense of everyday life. Such a cultural understanding
of class and stratification should free us to strategize about how it could be
otherwise. Meyer only ventures into this in a minor way. The question that
remains is how that delegitimation may be accomplished.
Pierre Bourdieus Critique

Pierre Bourdieu offers a second critique of realism in class analyses. Like
Meyer, Bourdieu (198788) embeds his argument in the intersection of
the primary social experience (p. 1) and in the problem of knowl-
edge (p. 1). Bourdieu rejects a false opposition between objectivism
and subjectivism: In reality, agents are both classified and classifiers, but
they classify according to (or depending on) their position within the clas-
sifications (p. 2). In this, there is both a partial subjective moment and
an objectivist moment taken from a determinate position in an objective
social space (p. 2).
Bourdieu also makes it clear that addressing the question of whether
classes exist as reality is in many ways a politicized scene. He argues that
whatever answer is given . . . is based on political choices (198788,
p. 2). Those asserting the existence of classes will tend to take a realist
stance, while those denying the existence of classes tend to indicate that
there are no categorical differences, but rather continua upon which social
scientist inscribe their versions of realitytheoretical artifacts (p. 3). Yet
Bourdieu argues that both share a substantialist philosophy (p. 3)
. . . which recognizes no other reality than that which is given directly

given to the intuition of ordinary experience. In fact, it is possible to
deny the existence of classes as homogeneous sets of economically and
socially differentiated individuals objectively constituted into groups,
and to assert at the same time the existence of a space of differences
based on a principle of economic and social differentiation. In order to
do so, one needs only to take up the relational or structural mode of
thinking characteristic modern mathematics and physics, which identi-
fies the real not with substances but with relationships.
With this, Bourdieu displaces the real from phenomena to the rela-
tions among phenomena. These he equates with a structure that is not
discernible by sense-experience (198788, p. 3). Structure itself is a
space, a social space (p. 3, italics in original) that can be understood .
. . by discovering the powers or forms of capital (p. 4, italics in original)
that are used to appropriate scarce goods. He then returns to his classic
distinctions of forms of capital:
In a social universe like French society, and no doubt in the American

society of today, these fundamental social powers are . . . firstly economic
capital, in its various kinds; secondly cultural or better, informational cap-
ital, again in its different kinds; and thirdly two forms of capital resources
that are very strongly correlated, social capital, which consists of re-
sources based on connections and group membership, and symbolic cap-
ital, which is the form the different types of capital take once they are
perceived and recognized as legitimate. Thus agents are distributed in the
overall social space, in the first dimension according to the global volume
of capital they possess, in the second dimension according to the compo-
sition of their capital, that is, according to the relative weight in the over-
all capital of their various forms of capital, especially economic and
cultural, and in the third dimension according to the evolution in time of
the volume and composition of their capital, that is, according to their tra-
jectory in social space. (p. 4, italics in original)
In this way, people are positioned relative to others not in one di-
mension, the verticality of class, but on multiple dimensions. Here Bour-
dieu then notes that the danger is that people will then interpret this
analysis in a substantialist mannerchanging analytic constructs into
real, objectively constituted groups (198788, p. 4). He concludes:
Ironically, the more accurate the theoretical construction of theoretical
Class-Dclass 323
classes, the greater the chance that they will be seen as real groups (p. 4).
Here he joins Meyer in arguing that theory has within it the means of re-
grouping individuals into classes in such ways that agents in the same
class are as similar as possible . . . and in such a way that the classes are
distinct as possible from one another (p. 5). This in turn obscures the
social space from view, making realism apparently accurate.
Thus the idea of a class comes to have a life of its own. People af-
fected by the classification, according to Bourdieu, are affected both in-
trinisically (as being about themselves) and relationally (in relation to
other classes) so as to create a homogenizing effect (198788, p. 6).
That is, the categorization itself sets in motion the creation of a group
with some semblance of similarity.
This account of how classes are socially constituted shares elements
of Meyers argument. Theory and social analysis are not irrelevant to so-
cial life but constitutive of it. Knowledge names elements of social life.
This is in turn taught to the elite and to the educated who attend col-
lege. They use these categories to constitute their own lives and through
the media the tentative analytic constructs of intellectuals come to be the
terms we all use to describe ourselvesto constitute and situate ourselves
and the meaning of our lives. As intellectuals we cannot escape complic-
ity in this. Bourdieu even argues that the Marxist tradition confuses the
things of logic with the logic of things (198788, p. 7)the theorized
classes are equated with a mobilized group with a self-consciousness.
This, of course, is how both the American and British working class be-
comes problems for class analysis. Bourdieu then concludes his discus-
sion of the objectivist moment: Social classes, or more precisely, the
class which is tacitly referred to when we speak of social classes, namely,
the working class exists sufficiently to make us question or at least deny
its existence, even in the most secure academic spheres, only inasmuch
as all sorts of historical agents, starting with social scientists such as
Marx, have succeeded in transforming what could have remained an an-
alytical construct into a folk category, that is, into one of those impec-
cably real social fictions produced and reproduced by the magic of social
belief (p. 9).
It is important to note that Bourdieu does not center politics in the ob-
jectivist moment. Rather, he focuses on how theory can create reality, suf-
ficient that we mistake our categories for real life and thus the categorical
imperative makes such things as social class appear to be objectively con-
stituted. There is a politics involved in this, of course, but Bourdieu places
this politics firmly in the subjectivist moment. His argument has implica-
tions for how intellectuals behave as well. He argues that it makes little
sense for theorists to try to adjudicate which beliefs, analytic constructs,
and/or folk theories are more real since this theoreticist epistemcentrism
leads one to forget that the criteria used in the construction of the objec-
tive space and of the well-founded classifications it makes possible are also
instrumentsI should say weaponsand stakes in the classsification strug-
gle which determines the making and unmaking of the classifications cur-
rently in use (198788, pp. 910, italics in original).
Here he points to how the objectivist claim about class is founded on
the subjectivist moment, meaning that the former is at best loose fitting
and at worse distant from the social space being categorized because it is
a social constitution of modern societynot of empirical reality. His ar-
gument is that which had to be set aside to create an objective account of
social position must be reinterred in the space it was exiled from. Ideolo-
gies, for instance, are not problems but better understood as one set of
the strategies of representation at play in the social space of stratification.
This leads him to reject the objectivist/subjectivist distinction, or as
he puts it:
One can and must transcend the opposition between the vision which
we can indifferently label realist, objectivist, or structuralist on the one
hand, and the constructivist, subjectivist, spontaneist vision on the other.
Any theory of the social universe must include the representation that
agents have of the social world and, more precisely, the contribution they
make to the construction of the vision of that world, and consequently,
to the very construction of that world. It must take into account the sym-
bolic work of fabrication of groups, of group-making. It is through this
endless work of representation (in every sense of the term) that social
agents try to impose their vision of the world or the vision of their own
position in that world, and to define their social reality. Such a theory
must take as an incontrovertible truth that the truth of the social world
is the stake of a struggle. And, by the same token, it must recognize that,
depending on their position in social space, that is, in the distributions
of the various species of capital, the agents involved in this struggle are
very unequally armed in the fight to impose their truth, and have very
different, and even opposed aims. (198788, pp. 1011)
Bourdieus politics then is played out the plurality of visions such

that . . . the space of objective differences (with regard to economic and
cultural capital) finds an expression in a symbolic space of visible distinc-
tions, of distinctive signs which are so many symbols of distinction (p. 11,
italics in original). In this politics, there is considerable room for manuev-
ering and manipulation of relations of group membership. The struggle
then is one of symbolism aimed at the definition of boundaries between
groups, which in turn imposes a vision of divisions that enable the consti-
tution of properly political collective struggles (198788, p. 13): In
these struggles whose ultimate aim, in modern societies, is the power to
nominate held by the state, i.e., the monopoly over legitimate symbolic
Class-Dclass 325
violence, agentswho in this case are almost always specialists, such as

politiciansstruggle to impose representations (e.g. demonstrations) which
create the very things represented, which make them exist publicly, offi-
cially. Their goal is to turn their own vision of the social world, and the
principles of division upon which it is based, into the official vision, into
nomos, the official principle of vision and division.
Bourdieu is pointing to how ideas that seemingly work for analytic
and discursive purposes can become reified over time and lose both their
historical and spatial particularity (Abu-Lughod, 1991; Noblit, 1999).
With reification, these ideas and practices take on a life of their own. Peo-
ple begin to organize their lives with them moving literally from is in a
specific time and space, to ought in a wider set of spaces. As I have ar-
gued elsewhere (Noblit, 1999), this move is often then coupled to power
and legitimation, creating a fortification around what was once simply a
seemingly good idea about the particular into the right way to think
and act. Legitimation becomes fortified when it is embedded in a set of
practices all seen as the right way to believe act and ultimately when the
power at play in everyday interaction to enforce an ought is coupled
with the state, law, and ultimately law enforcement. For Bourdieu, the
stakes are the imposition of legitimated rules about the construction of
reality. Thus power over symbols becomes the power to objectify in pub-
lic and formal ways.
Bourdieu concludes by arguing that the dominated have imposed the
categories of preception that foster the acceptance of a given order of
things as the dominant strive to impose a vision of the world that makes
their privilege justified. Yet the dominated have a practical knowledge
of the social world that can be a truly creative power enabling a
reconceptualization, a new naming, which allows for groups conscious of
their position to emerge where mere collectives once had been.
The Irreality of Class

Meyer and Bourdieu have somewhat different arguments. Meyers critique
is that stratification theorists are decidedly structuralist, and in this they
miss the role of culture in promoting widely shared belief systems. Even
opposition to stratification reproduces the structuralist view. Bourdieu
shares this view but rejects the distinction that Meyer makes, arguing the
point that there are objectivist and subjectivist moments in understanding
social class. Meyer is willing, moreover, to embrace a strategy of decerti-
fication of myths that seems fully consistent with Bourdieus argument,
but Bourdieu is less willing to jump to this decertificationpossible
because his dualistic portrait of the objective and subjective moments
lends less certainty to the outcome of intention. He would argue that
decertification seemingly requires an objectivist moment that Meyer seems

to otherwise decry.
While Bourdieu and Meyer construct their arguments somewhat dif-
ferently, they are agreed on a key point that will serve as the basis for my
arguments to follow. The point is that social analysts play the role of cre-
ating a symbolic system, a theory and analysis, which plays back into the
social world as an account that others use as part of the struggle to name
social reality. Our theories play as strategies and given the alignment of
knowledge and power, serve the interests of domination. This is true
whether we focus on analyses purportedly to emancipate the subaltern,
or whether we advance a more functionalist analysis. The latter enables a
strategy that justifies existing distinctions under the guise of a universal
system analogy. The former reifies class distinctions through its analysis
and unwittingly teaches the dominant the arts of resistance (Scott,
1990) that can then be countered via representational strategies that
Bourdieu might see as symbolic violence toward the lower classes.
This, of course, creates a conundrum for social analysts and activists
alike. Naming comes back upon us, and can be used by those with more
power over symbols and representation to strategically create realities.
Perhaps an analogy to the field of cultural studies might help us circum-
scribe the void left by the irreality of class. A central theme of cultural
studies is that naming comes back to us and is one reason why cultural
studies is reluctant to name itself definitively. By embracing the fuzziness
and the indeterminacy that results from this, cultural studies can open
representation itself for interrogation. Such rhetorical devices as accept-
ing multiple interpretations as all real (both/and instead of either/or)
highlight the issue of symbolic representation itself as it undercuts efforts
to use social analyses to undergird definitive distinctions like those used
in the study of stratification. In this then cultural studies provides a vision
of how to do class without reproducing class distinctions. If class is d-
class, it is because we have asked it to carry too much. It had to be both
real and transcendent in the same moment. It seems then that to save the
idea of social class from itself we need to supplant it with an approach
like that of cultural studies. Importantly, however, our new conceptual-
ization must enable strategic action even as it disclaims definitiveness.
Intersectionality
It is telling that when it was clear that race and gender were not reducible
to class and thus class could no longer be the base upon which social dis-
tinction was built, the response of intellectuals was to first move to dtente.
The argument was that class, race, and gender were parallel in how they
worked to stratify society. Raymond Morrow and Carlos Torres (1998)
and others argued for a nonsynchronistic, parallelist position. For them,
Class-Dclass 327
this argument was not just about the salience of class but also a defense
against a postmodernism that they saw as undercutting the project of cri-
tique itself. I have no wish to argue the specifics of whether class, race, and
gender operate in parallel or their relative synchrony. In large part, this is
because I take this project to be rooted in claims of realism and objectivism.
Rather, I want to note that when we start from another vantage point than
class, different conceptualizations are possible. That is, when one is not de-
fending the basis of social class it appears that other alternatives are possi-
ble. Emerging from critical legal studies and critical race studies, a different
conceptualization is termed intersectionality. Intersectionality recognizes
that analytically, separate categories actually exist together and in tension
in everyday life. As African-American women have argued to white femi-
nists, it is not possible to separate ones gender and ones race. To this, I
could add ones class, sexual orientation, physical and mental ablism, and
so on. Yet let me stay closer to the project at hand, social class, even though
all are ultimately salient to intersectionality.
Intersectionality is a term used by Kimberle Crenshaw (1991) to de-
scribe how race and gender act together. She drew heavily on feminist
theory and antiracism theory in arguing that the law and court actions in
antidiscrimination cases forced black women to chose race or gender as
the basis of their claim to having been discriminated against. Intersec-
tionality is Crenshaws way of highlighting the fact that race and gender
(in her argument) are not parallel in their effects and are not simply ad-
ditive in their effects. That is to say, together they constitute something
more than the analytic distinctions capture separately.
Crenshaw (1994) is also careful not to argue for a new definitive the-
ory. In fact, she is careful to eschew a totalizing theory. Rather she simply
argues that the emphasis . . . on the intersections of race and gender only
highlights the need to account for multiple grounds of identity when con-
sidering how the social world is constructed (p. 94). Here Crenshaw re-
claims class not as an objective social position but as a form of identity.
This conceptualization of class as identity makes intersectionality
possible. It has also led to a theory of identity as not a fixed stae of self
but rather as cultural performance. For example, in Girls Without Class,
Julie Bettie (2003) describes the experiences of young women in high
school. She sees them as navigating class, race, and ethnicity and gender
in multiple ways. She saw that class categories are . . . infused with and
intersect with gender and racial/ethnic meanings (p. 7). In her work,
class is understood as an identity performance that could not be sepa-
rated from gender and race:
Because middle- or working-class performances were experienced dif-

ferently across race/ethnicity, and further, because those performances
were read differently by others, dependent on the race/ethnicity of the
performer, and because it is impossible to uncouple these meanings, I

used the hyphenated race-class performances of femininity as a way
to indicate that class performances have race and gender specific mean-
ings. But I could just as well speak of gender-class performances of
race or race-gender performances of class. That race, class, gender
and sexual meanings and identities intersect is not simply an abstract
theoretical insight. (pp. 5556)
Intersectionality posits that multiple bases of distinction work to-

gether. It is more difficult to reify this conceptualization inasmuch as it is
a performance of identity rather than an objective and definitive position.
This offers a way to approach distinctions such as class in a way that
makes it more difficult to be appropriated for stratification.
In fact, by highlighting intersectionality, Bettie offers an explanation
for the quotes I began with declaring class to be dclass. She explains:
Class is largely missing as a category of identity offered by popular

culture and political discourse in the early-twenty-first century United
States. Class is not a central category of thought, making it difficult to
have a cultural or political class identity. Class is often conceptually dis-
placed onto or read through other categories of difference like gender
and race is such a way that class is rendered invisible. While it is not a
more fundamental axis of identity or mechanism of social organization,
it is perhaps more often obscure. Given the U.S. ideology of upward mo-
bility, class is either not a present category of thought at all or is present
but understood only as a difference of money and therefore as tempo-
rary. Consequently, categories like race and gender, which appear to be
essentially there, fixed, and natural, readily take the place of class in
causal reasoning, rather than being understood as mediated by or inex-
tricably intertwined with class and one another. Thus, commonsense
discourses on race and gender can work to preclude class visibility.
(p. 195, italics in original)
Here we see an important aspect of intersectionality. Without a com-

mitment to examine intersectionality critically, these young women could
not see how class had been made invisible to them. This situation is filled
with ironies, first, that the physical markers of identity that enable forms
of oppression also enable identities with which to live with and to address
forms of oppression. Second, these same physical markers upon which
racism and sexism are built come to have such salience as identity mater-
ial that class is hidden from view. Part of the project of this chapter, then,
allow class to be recognizable. Without this, Bettie shows that young
women she worked with had a discursive absence (2003, p. 194). She
argues that the essentialized conceptualizations (p. 196, italics in orig-
inal) of gender and race work against recognizing class differences.
Class-Dclass 329
Because they are taken to be natural and inevitable (p. 196), class was
outside the discourse of difference: . . . class meaning was routinely ar-
ticulated through other categories of difference (race, gender, sexuality)
and in other terms (family values, individualism, self-esteem (p. 196).
The taken for grantedness of race and gender organized the discourse of
difference even as it helped mask the reproduction of class difference.
Yet Bettie (2003) wants to be clear that class was being actively
played out:
Working class performers, across race/ethnicity, had their dignity

wounded through exposure to middle-class performers who routinely,
and often unknowingly, inflicted class and race-based injuries in their
practices of exclusion. Differing race-class performances of femininity
took hold as girls defined themselves relationally in opposition to multi-
ple others and as working-class girls adopted alternative badges of dig-
nity that worked, at times, as a kind of resistance to symbolically heal
class and race injuries. In short, girls began constructing future class po-
sitions for themselves without the awareness that they were engaged in
doing so, and future class positions were constructed for them as their
limited economic and cultural resources ensured that the vast majority
of working-class girls would both opt out and be tracked out of a mid-
dle-class trajectory. (p. 190)
Her argument then is that class operates in social disclosure but is ob-
scured by the conceptions of race, gender, and sexuality as categorical
givens. As importantly, though, Bettie argues that class is not simply re-
produced but constantly re-created and co-created with processes of
racialization and gender and sexual formation (p. 194).
In this, she takes intersectionality to a new place. It is not that just
that they act together in ways that have more salience than each alone.
They are co-constitutive in a particular way. Race, gender, and sexuality
constitute class as invisible. Class is not there in ways that race, gender,
and sexuality are in the discourses available in everyday life. This seems
to invite an unveiling of social class in our public discourses. Bettie
strategizes: It is important to locate instances of class cultural aware-
ness, to make visible the everyday politics of resentment, and to go be-
yond this to provide a discourse which offers to transform that into a
politicized class identity, alongside other political positionings (2003,
p. 201). She is after a discursive equality to the politics of difference: class
should take its deserved position alongside race, gender, sexuality,
(dis)ability, and so forth. Assuredly this is the ultimate goal. Yet unfortu-
nately I believe that this task has the forces of history and culture against
it. From Karl Marx on, the direct assault has been repelled repeatedly,
and I will argue, it has been part and parcel of creating the essentialized
views we have of race and gender especially. In the pages that follow, I
will discuss how, in trying to make class more real, our efforts have in-
stead fed the reality of other forms of difference. Thus, I suggest, in our
ongoing efforts to name class, we undercut our efforts to demonstrate
that these categories are socially constructed and legitimated in relations
of power and knowledge. In what follows, we will need to reconstitute
class in relation to other identities, enabling its character to be recogniz-
able in its relation to other identities at the intersection.
I want to propose that intersectionality allows us a way to think
about relations between identities and oppression. We can, for example,
focus both on conceptions of race and gender as well as conduct a con-
certed assault on how class is understood. In the past, the reduction of
difference to class was usually argued as a way to unite people in a com-
mon struggle. This has not come to be for many reasons, including the
self-interests of credentialed middle-class scholars. Yet, class was unable
to be used as a rallying point for shared concerns of oppressed groups be-
cause it was interpreted as an assertion of whiteness and patriarchy. To
non-whites and women, rallying as a social class meant submitting once
again. What is needed is an assault on many fronts: race, gender, sexual-
ity, (dis)ability, and so on. Rather than reducing difference, we need to
acknowledge difference and strategize how we can use categories of dif-
ference as a counter story (Ladson-Billings and Tate, 1995) to that of in-
dividualism and functionalist meritocracy that Meyer has identified as the
key myths of stratification in the West. This task is beyond the scope of
this chapter or even this book. Rather, I will simply point to one such ap-
proach from the perspective of race. I hope others will develop ap-
proaches from other standpoints as Patricia Hill Collins (1991) would
term them. In the end, however, I will return to argue that the multiple
standpoint approach may enable the discourse to be opened up but there
will need to be a new discourse of class to help fill the void. Class needs
to serve race and gender rather than to seek to reduce them. In this I want
to advance Betties interest in moving to a place where class can be
named, but want to emphasize that this naming be in the context of spec-
ifying the relation of class to other forms of difference.
Race into Class

I must admit that there are times when I wish to argue that class may be use-
fully understood as what whites do to each other and this is then visited on
other categories of difference as a cultural model of how to stratify. Thus,
we get class differences within races and genders and so on, yet beyond
what whites do to each other whites and men also race and gender others as
well. The heterosexual, white male then visits his distinctions on sexuality
Class-Dclass 331
and on (dis)ability. While I acknowledge that this understates the roles of

subalterns in creating difference, it helps remind me that it is my race, gen-
der, and sexuality, and the power that has been pulled to these, which act
together to stratify the social world. It reminds me that when I make argu-
ments like I wish to do here, that it is also an act born of this power.
While I try to pursue equity broadly I am most intrigued by race.
Race offers one way to leverage intersectionality, and it involves asserting
race not as a category of difference but as a source of relation. Clearly,
gender is another way to leverage intersectionality and, may offer real ad-
vantages in some coalition building. I will limit my discussion here to
how gender may be a lever within education so as to advance a different
conception of class. The larger point is that class needs to be understood
in its relation to other forms of difference and thus starting from any of
other forms would seem to push toward a more complex view of class
and of a lived intersectionality of identity and experience.
The project I take on here is to use race to get to other forms of dis-
tinction, other irrealities that have been made real by distinctions drawn
to conserve the power of the dominant. I think of the idea as starting with
race to get into classbut ultimately understand a fuller complex of the
relations of difference and dominance. That is, we remake class by un-
derstanding how it is constructed coterminously with race. The goal is
not to reduce class to race but to enable class to be possible. In this, em-
bracing race as a first move enables us to constitute class and gender (and
ability as well as other forms of domination) in their own rights and in
the context of each and all. Class need not be left to be dclass.
Given my analysis of the problems of asserting the reality of class, it
is also essential that race not be treated as real as well. It must be seen as
a particular historical and social construction and thus is malleable. The
goal has to get beyond the conceptualization used to beginthat is, it
must be transformative in intent and outcome. An explicit embracing of
intersectionality is thus necessary, but this must move beyond the multi-
plicity of identity and identity politics to engage domination and democ-
racy more fully. For me, these conditions are best satisfied by critical race
theory (Crenshaw et al., 1995) with its intent to reconceptualize race and
politics. Here, the move in critical legal studies to consider the implica-
tions of changing the basis of law from property rights (which enscribes
domination) to civil rights (which inscribes human possibility). The move
to narrativity in critical race theory is also to embrace imagination over
reality since reality inscribes race as a problem not as a possibility. Third,
and most importantly, there has been a theoretically based project artic-
ulated that can be a basis for getting to class. Guinier and Torres (2002)
have argued for a project around race to alter hierarchy generally. In
doing so, they also engage class and gender (though not ablism, sexuality,
and other forms of subjugation as directly). They do not directly, how-

ever, address how their project can help us reinvigorate class. I will argue
this as but an extension to their work, one that is implicit if not fully
explicit in their argument.
Guinier and Torres (2002) term their effort political race (p. 10), a pro-
ject to topple the hierarchy itself (p. 9): It is a fundamentally creative
political project that begins from the ground up, starting with race and all
its complexity, and then builds cross-racial relationships through race and
with race to issues of class and gender in order to make democracy real
(p. 10). They are clear about why they see race as a better place to begin
such a project than class. They argue that class in our society has become
so individuated that it has been impossible to build a sense of linked fate
(p. 101) that has been possible around race. They respond to critics who
argue that emphasizing race undermines coalitions with the white working
class by pointing out that de-emphasizing race means that no coalition will
be possible across races because this is understood as a reinscription of
whiteness. De-emphasizing race also undercuts the racial pride that that is
the basis of community and solidarity. Thus, they argue that one must
build from race not from class because There is simply no American vo-
cabulary for class as linked fate or as a basis for critique of systemic fail-
ure (p. 103). This is because the narrative of the American Dream
(p. 103) that individual hard work will lead to social mobility is also linked
to a narrative that if whites fail in the mobility game then racialized others
are to blame. Because class in not named in this society, to collapse race
into class would be to make both invisible, disabling a social movement
from forming around either variable (p. 103, italics in original). Further-
more, a political race analysis can help identify class barriers leading to
conscious coalition-building while acknowledging existing racial divi-
sions (p. 102). They document the viability of this strategy in cases of
union organizing that explicitly addressed race. One result for working-
class whites was a repositioning of themselves about race so that they could
see themselves as part of the civil rights movement.
Moreover, they are clear that political race must go beyond itself,
embracing intersectionality: political race must assert its linkages to
class, gender, and sexuality or else risk fragmentation (Guinier and Tor-
res, 2002, p. 298). That is to say, political race is argued to be the start-
ing point but is not the only subjugation that must be interrogated. This
then is the beginning of a transformative moment. Political race does not
reduce other forms of difference to race but is a way to develop linkages
to other forms of difference.
Transformation, of course, is not defined by linkages per say. Rather,
transformation indicates that something becomes something it was not.
For Guinier and Torres (2002), the political race project is to transform
Class-Dclass 333
both power and democracy: . . . we seek to use political race to create a

dialogue about interactive forms of representation and more inclusive
practices of democracy. Political representation becomes less about relin-
quishing power or seizing power or surrendering power. Instead, it be-
comes more about facilitating a dynamic engagement that begins to tell
new stories about democracy. These stories involve organizing at the
grassroots level, sharing power, and engaging the people themselves in
actions that dissipate fear and build confidence (p. 221).
For Guinier and Torres, the nature of power is to be transformed
from the zero-sum conception (2002, p. 138) into powerwith
(p. 141). Fueled by both Foucauldian and feminist conceptions, the polit-
ical race project rejects the view that because power operates everywhere
that struggle is a hollow exercise. Following some feminist thinkers, they
argue that power is constituted through relationships and cannot be done
away with. Yet power, since it is socially constituted, can be transformed:
. . . what we can imagine is the transformation of the relationships and
interactions among human beings. To imagine that such a transformation
would eliminate the circulation of power is fantasy; rather, this reorienta-
tion seeks to capture powers generative capacity (pp. 13940).
Power-with then is that form of power generated through collective
action and struggle and through the creation of an alternative set of nar-
ratives (Guinier and Torres, 2002, p. 141). Moreover, such participa-
tion not only leads to direct results, but allows a form of dignity even in
the face of that dignity being potentially denied. Guinier and Torres go on
to argue that power-with contains elements of power-over, and that in-
deed the two forms of power will likely exist side by side in any struggle
and change in relation to one another. Yet they offer the analogy that
if power-over is a pyramid, then power-with is an egg with two centers
of gravity. This embodies the notion of shared and changing power rela-
tions. They conclude that power-with can be understood as having
elements of (1) working together over time in groups rather than as in-
dividuals in isolation; (2) seeing problems in context rather than as small
units independent of the whole; (3) approaching problem-solving in ways
that spark joint participation from diverse perspectives; and (4) defining
problems locally, by the immediate stakeholders and then networking to
similar efforts going on elsewhere (p. 146).
Power-with, however, is not the only transformation sought in the
political race project. The nature of democracy itself is to be changed.
The transformation sought is from the current system where elites con-
duct deliberations about policy and supposedly are held accountable
through elections. The chimera here is that this process is supposedly one
of representation, when it is the justification of an elite. Guinier and Tor-
res argue that this process violates the true sense of democracy whereby
people are brought into public decisionmaking as participants, not as

spectators (2002, p. 171).
They review experiences within the Latino community and see His-
panic/Latino identity as having a promising role in destabilizing the
black-white binary (Guinier and Torres, 2002, p. 252). They also take
two lessons from the Latino experience. First, when coupled with the
promise to increase democracy in general, political race is more easily le-
gitimated. Second, using political race only makes sense when coupled to
efforts to undercut the dominant zero-sum definition of power.
Transforming power also involves directly resisting one of many
mechanisms of securing a hierarchy based on race: the racial bribe. The
bribe promises advancement on the color hierarchy (becoming whiter) in
exchange for dropping a racial groups oppositional agenda. This is done
by whites offering incentives that encourage the affected group to disas-
sociate themselves from those seen as of color, and by securing high
status for individual members of the affected group within existing hier-
archies. All this makes whiteness appear less monolithic, making the
definition appear less problematic. Thus the strategy of political race re-
quires that naming and destabiliizing be coupled with refusing to accept
the racial bribe. . . . political race requires that we exercise constant vig-
ilance in renegotiating the black-white binary. The internal dynamics of
race within each national group are complex. And like any historical mo-
ment, the contingencies admit many possible futures (Guinier and Tor-
res, 2002, p. 249).
These futures must be imagined in ways that whitestream (Denis,
1997; Grande, 2000; Urrieta, 2004) worldviews cannot. Here the turn is
to narratives, to aspiration, and to magic realism as ways to conceive the
possibilities for the future. Narratives are to speak of the experiences of
those whose experiences have not counted in the social construction of
power. These narratives are to disrupt racialized hierarchies by chang-
ing the background stories we tell each other about race, wealth and
power (Guinier and Torres, 2002, p. 293).
Narratives allow new perspectives to be expressed and invite inter-
pretation by others (Benjamin, 1968). Aspiration is argued to go beyond
the descriptive and to be both explanatory and motivational (Guinier
and Torres, 2002, p. 18). It accepts a view of power, drawn from Michel
Foucault, that emphasizes the circularity and distribution of power
throughout human life; and our agency that is generative of new forms
of creativity (p. 18). The possibilities also have to be imagined. Magic
realism is employed in the political race project as part of conceiving new
possibilities: By liberating the imagination, magical realists give voice to
the possibilities of futures that are not held hostage to either the military
Class-Dclass 335
juntas in power or the juntas neoliberal defenders (p. 23). Magic real-
ism also engages the reader-witness-participant in the interpretation of a
dislocation, a defamiliarization, a discrepancy:
. . . magic realists . . . narrate the fantasies, myths and quotidian life in

the same frame. The reader sees the previously familiar things in a com-
pletely new context. The change in context is critical, for it provides the
foundation for radically different meanings. Though the new reality may
astonish and disorient readers, the characters in the story react to it with
curiosity and faith rather than with confusion, uncertainty, fear, or disbe-
lief. This discrepancy between the readers and the characters reaction is
key. The reader enters a reality that is fantastic yet remains empirically
grounded through the actions and reactions of the characters. (p. 23)
It is this distance between the grounding and the fantastic that can
generate possibilities not imaginable either within the dominant white-
stream view nor the resistance and opposition to it. Political race is
expressly committed to clarity about the possibilities (Guinier and Tor-
res, 2002, p. 300) and to renewal through practice, accepting that people
choose by their actions (p. 300).
Political race as a project is transformative in another way. In the end,
reconceptualizing power, disrupting hierarchy, narrating counterstories,
and imagining new possibilities come full circle for race itself to be reimag-
ined as well: While political race is a form of black race-consciousness, we
do not reduce it to its biological expressions nor to its expression as anti-
whiteness (Guinier and Torres, 2002, p. 99). Race can be reconstructed
without biological essentialism, allowing the positive aspects of racial iden-
tity to be asserted into building coalitions. It also means leaving something
behind. As they write:
Political race, in other words, involves several dramatic dislocations

in conventional wisdom. The first will occur when white progressives
recognize a more complex notion of racial consciousness that exists out-
side of, yet is connected to, conventional class analysis. They will come
to understand that energy for social change is often created when blacks
and other racial minorities are encouraged to organize as a group with-
out merely retreating into an exclusionary racial consciousness. The sec-
ond disruption involves moving away from the anti-discrimination
model that has dominated the discourse of civil rights. This discourse, in
fact, sometimes inhibits the development of a broader coalition to chal-
lenge the status quo. Such a change might require black leadership and
the leadership of other marginalized communities of color to articulate
the consciousness of racialized identity in broader terms than the current
remedial strategies of the civil rights paradigm. (p. 25)
Political race then is a project of building coalitions that puts the

democratic process in direct opposition to the dominant ideology of in-
dividualism, as reflected in the consumerism of the market, in order to ar-
ticulate the needs of those whom the market neglects (Guinier and
Torres, 2002, p. 101).
The political race project rejects our current definition of racism.
They argue that the current definition is too tied up with fighting irra-
tional prejudice (Guinier and Torres, 2002, p. 292) and individual big-
otry. Guinier and Torres are less interested in measuring blame and
more concerned with developing a political framework that spurs us to
respond and act (p. 292). Their definition then of racism relies on
whether people naturalize racialized hierarchies (p. 292, italics in origi-
nal). The political race project is to disrupt racialized hierarchies by
changing the background stories we tell one another about race, wealth
and power (p. 293).
The coalitions are fashioned in rather context specific ways, but they
invariably are to bring whites, both working class and the elites, to a view
of linked fate with racialized peoples. Power is more likely to bring added
energy and innovation across-the-board and benefit all racialized groups
even if it is explicitly about reducing hierarchy. Thus, some white elites
may find coalitions in their own interest. Many projects that they cite as
achieving the coalitions moving toward power-with, have broad leader-
ship that includes some white leaders as well. These projects also share a
realization by whites that they, too, were, in fact, functionally black
(Guinier and Torres, 2002, p. 290) in the existing hierarchy.
In these, I would argue we see how political race allows us to return
to social class not as a category but as an engaged opposition. Racialized
difference remains as the coalition inscribes the linked fate of the mem-
bers. Class can be a coalition of difference engaged over time. This of
course has some resemblance to Aronowitzs (2003) argument that we
should think about class as a social movement. Yet I read Aronowitz to
be speaking about more sweeping movements than Guinier and Torres
use as their cases. He argues for forming alliances in a global context and
accepts the fact that struggle on a class basiswhich invariably entails
playing the zero sum game, is necessary for gains to be made (Arono-
witz, 2003, p. 170). Guinier and Torres see coalitions as formed not
across race but between races, with less necessity for sweeping move-
ments given their rather different conception of power than Aronowitz.
Sweeping movements are more demanded when preserving the zero sum
definition of power. Power-with does not seek to simply replace who is in
power, but more significantly to replace how power itself is deployed.
Class, from a political race perspective, is not as much determined by
economics as it has the potential to be economically realized as coalitions
Class-Dclass 337
work on their linked fates to address inequities and hierarchies. Class

does not become a superseding category but rather the sign of a particu-
lar type of coalitiona coalition to use racial difference constructively to
address their linked fate while changing the definition of power itself.
In my claim that political race allows us to construct class differently,
I must also be tempered by what are acknowledged limitations of the po-
litical race project (Guinier and Torres, 2002). First, most current pro-
gressive organizing efforts are premised on the suppression of difference
in efforts to create an alliance to deal with race-neutrally defined issues.
Thus, racial hierarchies become institutionalized within these efforts. The
challenge of political race projects then is to create a new mode of orga-
nizing itself, one that is not premised on erasing differences, but rather
premised on enlisting differences. Second, political race is not directed to-
ward conventional electoral coalitions. Rather, it more about activating
the grassroots: the losers of society stand to gain the most, and risk the
least, from mobilizing for change, and they already have the tools for
analysis at their disposal (p. 296). Third, power is currently mobilized in
a zero-sum manner, and thus political race functions in this context even
as it works to change the definition of power. This means that coalitions
must help each party to the coalition resist internal hierarchies, and that
projects will likely be in-between (p. 297) existing deployments of
power-over. As a result, they are likely to change with time and conditons
and will have to be continually renegotiated. Thus, arguing that we can
create a new conception of class, one that is not dclass, is to argue that
class is unstable and must be constantly renegotiated as well, that class-
as-coalition of difference actively works against racial hierarchies in the
coalition as much as in the wider society. In this way, class works to
maintain race differences, to construct conceptions of linked fate, and to
work against internal hierarchies within the coalition and within the par-
ties to the coalition as well.
Education, Political Race, and Class

The political race project as developed by Guinier and Torres is based on
examples that portend that a new notion of social class could be seen in
such coalitions. Yet they were not as concerned, as I am here, with recon-
stituting class itself. They also have not tried to argue for a role for educa-
tion in the project. My argument has been that over the last forty years or
so, we have developed new understandings of race and gender that are not
reducible to class. This challenge has meant that the claim that class is an
objective condition that explains inequality and injustice must be re-
thought. This rethinking has taken many modes: from outright rejection of
class as category of worth to retheorizing class (as contending groups, as
social movements, etc.) to staunch reassertions of the value of class analy-

sis. My argument here has been that if the lessons of race and gender analy-
sis are taken seriously, then class cannot be what it once was. If gender and
race are social constructions, historically situated and changing across time
and space, then class is not real as wellit is a social construction that
must be now be accomplished in ways we have not theorized.
My argument is that we may gain the most from going to class
through race. In doing so, race is preserved as a source of identity, con-
ceptualization, and mobilization rather than reduced or superseded in
moving to class. Thus, class is a coalition of racialized groups that will
continue to maintain their separate identities as they work in concert on
fates they share. Class then does not sweep across society but is the ac-
complishment of localized coalitions in action. The coalitions are to resist
internal hierarchies, to maintain productive elements of racial difference,
and to foster a different definition of power. To the extent that class-as-
coalition of racialized groups is achieved, then it both reaches into race
and projects itself into localized and specific injustices. Class-as-coalition
then is likely to have somewhat different forms in different contexts, de-
pending on what the racialized groups agree is strategic. Therefore, we
understand class not as an objective condition, but as a strategy that is
likely to be reformed as contexts change. In this as well, we should admit
that as strategy, class could then disappear from any single scene if it no
longer has a purpose. Guinier and Torres seem to think that the experi-
ence of successful strategic action will strengthen and develop the coali-
tion. As a sociologist, this optimism seems well placed to me, with the
caveat that if inequity is successfully remedied or if the strategizing fails
repeatedly, then class-as-coalition of racialized groups may disappear.
I will not address this issue any further here, but this would seem to
present the possibilities of futures that critical race theory may find useful
to address.
What remains then is to consider how political race and class-as-
coalitions of racialized groups may be sponsored. While this needs to take
place across institutional and community venues, I want to focus on how
schools can help with the project of reconceptualizing power, disrupting
hierarchy, narrating counterstories, and imagining new possibilities. I do
this with a set of misgivings for I fully understand that schools inscribe
differences as deficits so that inequalities are both created and repro-
duced. Moreover, schools embody and reproduce the myths of rational-
ism and individualism that Meyer critiques. This is to say that the project
of political race and class-as-coalition of racialized groups meets institu-
tionalized ideology and power in schoolsit meets the definition of
power that is its nemesis. Moreover, schools are also being increasingly
pulled into the neoliberal agenda of the right through accountability pol-
Class-Dclass 339
icy and privatization and as a backlash against the intransigence of the

bureaucracy (Apple and Oliver, 1998). Yet I would also argue, with Fou-
cault, that there is more than just institutionalized power in schools.
There are fissures that may be exploited for this project. One of them is
the gendered nature of schools. Within schools, caring relations (Nod-
dings, 1984) between teachers and students mediate other forms of
power. This mediation can itself be a source of leverage.
Some educators see caring as unproblematic, an ideal form of rela-
tion. It is much more complex for me. Caring relations in many ways can
be seen as the basis of human development but they too exist in contexts
that complicate and even contradict this form of relation (Rolon-Dow,
2005; Valenzuela, 1999). I agree with Emily Abel and Margaret Nelson
(1990) that caring is also used to subjugate women. That is, the role of
women is constructed so that women naturally care, and then men
arrange occupation statuses so that caring work is devalued. Teaching is
a prime example of this. Teaching became womens work for many rea-
sons. In early American proprietary schools, only men were allowed to
handle the fiduciary affairs of the schools. Men were seen as capable of
handling money while women were regarded as naturally able to over-
see the development of children. The feminization of teaching was cou-
pled with the belief that oversight by men was needed to correct for the
tendencies of women to coddle children. The feminization of teaching is
such that males today who choose to be teachers must also address teach-
ing as a gendered occupation. Indeed, many males choose teaching pre-
cisely because it allows them to develop caring relationships and to center
these in their work lives. This is not without trade-offs of course. Men
who believe that caring is the necessary relation at the base of teaching
see their own claims to maleness questioned. Thus, some male teachers
find it necessary to assume a hypermasculinity to bolster their claim to
being males.
Not all women teachers embrace caring as the necessary relation of
teaching. Yet even in this we see the gendered nature of the teaching pro-
fession. These women are often regarded as not as feminine as others
and, in the everyday life of schools, are asked to assume more male
roles in disciplining students and in managing the wider school commu-
nity. Yet my argument is that regardless of the gender of the teacher, in
American schools, caring is a relationship that we can use in the recon-
struction of class. As I have written elsewhere (Noblit, 1993), race is
overlayed here as well. African-American women teachers may be re-
garded by white teachers as authoritarian (and less caring), when in fact
African-American women teachers situate caring as moral authority.
Moreover, caring is also a power relation: one is cared for by the one car-
ing. Caring as a form of mediation of institutionalized power is important
here as well. In some regards, caring relations make the symbolic vio-
lence of education less evident (Bourdieu, 1977). One gains a relation-
ship and possibly access to the whitestream social world as ones home
culture is devalued and ultimately subtracted from oneself (Valenzuela,
1999). Caring, then, exists in fields of power and in fields of relationship.
This makes caring one way to use schools to advance the political race
and class-as-coalition of the racialized groups project. Caring touches on
so much of schooling that it is a powerful lever.
I will not reargue the nature of caring or how it is gendered in our so-
ciety here. This has been done well elsewhere (Abel and Nelson, 1990;
Eaker-Rich and Van Galen, 1996; Gilligan, 1982; Noddings, 1984; Pril-
laman, Eaker and Kendricks, 1994; Rolon-Dow, 2005). What I wish to
focus on is how we might use the fact that women are the primary so-
cialization agents in schools, and that, as a gendered occupation, women
and men teachers develop relations with students that both make school-
ing possible (without outright rebellion) and that competes with institu-
tional controls as well. This dualism for me has the potential of being
strategically productivegender formations can be used to undercut
racial formations. As the African-American teaching force was largely
decimated by school desegregation and by its aftermath, this is also a
strategy that argues a role for whites at this point in history. To be sure,
I would want African-American teachers to in many ways lead the way
but to develop the political race project via schools, we must face the
reality that whites will need to be effectively deployed.
Following Guinier and Torres, the strategy should focus on develop-
ing coalitions around linked fates. Today schoolteachers experience as
much subjugation as students. High stakes testing is the bedrock of much
of this. Accountability policy (Noblit, Malloy, and Malloy, 2001) decen-
ters relationships in schools, denying women teachers their gender (as
constructed currently) and denying men and women teachers their moral-
ity (Noblit, 1993). These forms of denial then can be the basis of estab-
lishing the political race project through schools.
It is also important to recognize that women have a highly developed
pedagogy for the oppressorone that has been fashioned over history in
direct relation to their male oppressors (Noddings, 1989). Nel Noddings
has argued that this pedagogy involves moderation, mediation, and shar-
ing. That is, the acknowledged power of the oppressor means that
women intercede with men to reduce the brutality of oppression espe-
cially toward children. Mothers all too often take the beating that was
initially directed at the offspring. Women also work to broker an agree-
ment, to effect a reconciliation between the oppressor and oppressed.
Finally, women work through relationships in this pedagogy to renarrate
the transcripts (Scott, 1990) of oppression. Here, they educate the
Class-Dclass 341
oppressor in the limits of the oppressors perspective, as well as educating

the oppressor on how the exercise of power undercuts its own claims to
legitimacy. Through sharing their perspectives, women position them-
selves between adult males and vulnerable children. Men have much to
learn from this pedagogy.
Caring relations then can be leveraged for their potential in two ways.
First is to reclaim the moral responsibility of teachers for the welfare of
their students. Ironically, at least to me, this may mean that teachers
would find it helpful to rearticulate child development. In part, this could
be done in a conventional mode by aligning with specific reform efforts
that problematize simplistic notions of child development and the role of
schools. The work of James Comer (1993) is potentially of use here and
enables a coalition across race as well. Here the goal is for teachers to offer
counterstories to that contained in the media. The presumption of the fail-
ure of schools to teach could follow the lines of argument offered by
David Berliner and Bruce Biddle (1997) that schools have failed but not in
the teaching of content knowledge. They have failed to counteract poverty
and inequity. Teachers are well situated to tell this story in a wide num-
ber of venues, especially those that address parents and public more di-
rectly. Following critical race theory, the counterstory is to challenge that
told by the dominant media. Moreover, the story should emphasize that
accountability has not led to a narrowing of the gap between whites and
blacks. Politicians point to isolated cases, but this is the limit of the evi-
dence. Accountability policy can be countered, at this point in history, by
narrating it as both anti-child and racist. In this, white teachers and fami-
lies of colors share a linked fate that can be built upon.
Teachers also need to sponsor counterstories told by parents and stu-
dents. Here the goal is to design curricula that invites students and their
families to narrate their experiences and struggles. Such narrative work val-
ues the lives of those stigmatized by our myths, ideologies, and education
practices. These narratives may take the form of describing the learnings
that come from our lives. Such stories counter the centrality of education in
learning and rearticulates what schools as credentialing agents can and can-
not offer students and families. The result may be Meyers decertification
of legitimacy but our experience is that much more complex understand-
ings emerge (Noblit and Dempsey, 1996). These require people to engage
more deeply in how the world is socially constructed.
Yet these counterstories are insufficient in part because teachers cur-
rently consider parents as a key problem (Van Galen, 1987). This blam-
ing of parents, whatever its veracity in specific cases, undercuts the
possibilities of new coalitions. This blaming also permits teachers to dis-
count their own moral responsibility for educating children. Reclaiming
this will be necessary if counterstories are to lead to reimagine schooling
as a vehicle for the political race project. For schools to facilitate the po-
litical race project, teachers need to rearticulate the stories told about par-
ents in ways that fashion a coalition with parents to address inequities in
the community and nation. This would require teachers to accept the fact
that they are responsible for the learning of the children even if parents
are not helpful. It also requires that parents be understood not solely in
terms of their instrumentality to the school. The role of parents then is
reimagined not as primarily facilitating childrens learning but in articu-
lating to the wider world the linked fates of families of different racialized
groups. This is difficult to be sure, but we have seen this in practice.
George Noblit and Michael Jennings (2001) have shown how parents
can be mobilized around shared fates without requiring racial differences
to be suppressed. In this case, the schools multiracial staff and two minor-
ity communities, one African-American and one Chinese, were able to di-
rectly intercede in large city school board politics to benefit students from
both communities. Parents who found it hard to help their children with
school-defined learning coalesced around a political project for the school
and for their children. Educators sponsored the coalition by recognizing
race differences as important and to be maintained. They also became part
of the coalition with the parent groups to affect the fate of the entire
schoolin this case thwarting the disbursement of school populations to
other schools as a new school was built on the old site. The result was not
a lessening of race, but an engagement of race as what the school stood for.
Parents ended up understanding that the teachers cared for both races of
children and were willing to act to preserve not only the school but also the
racialized communities the school served. The school also found that a
focus on the needs of the children also enabled it to address accountability
policy directly. The school articulated for the community that high stakes
testing was being used to gain more control over education by the state leg-
islature. Thus, the coalition made it possible for the school to articulate
testing preparation as a political strategy rather than as a way to hold the
school accountable as the political rhetoric had maintained. Accountability
was driving a wedge where the school used its opposition to engage with
parents about the real needs of their children. The educators for their part
demonstrated they cared for all groups of students by focusing on a wider
definition of responding to the needs of children. Parents then saw the
school as key to their survival as separate racialized groups and as accept-
ing the responsibility to counter the policies that were geared to define their
children as problems. Incidentally, the test scores were rising rapidly as a
result of this new coalition, revealing the effects of the coalition that had
been formed. More important for our concern in this chapter is that they
provide an example of how schools might embody a political race project
and accomplish class-as-coalition of racialized groups. Class in this sense
Class-Dclass 343
is but a strategic accomplishmentone that was based on the belief that

the educators at the school cared about the children of both races and
about both racialized communities. The communities were not brought to-
gether to diminish race but to act to maintain the productive elements of
race differences in addressing their shared fates. The coalition also did not
lead to hierarchy among the groups and with the school. All were brought
together as parties to the coalition.
Conclusion
Social class has unfortunately become a concept that is overweight.
Clearly, class had some traction at the time of its initial articulation. Yet
instead of being treated as constructed category that had strategic uses, it
became caught up in the science project that came to characterize social
science (Pink and Noblit, 1995). The science project tried to mimic the
natural sciences in its emphasis on objective reality and deterministic
models. Yet this has had only a partial success. Human life is complex
and reactive. The critical tradition in sociology and education found itself
fighting a functionalist tradition that created a metaphor for social
life that was in many ways beyond human experience. As a result, from
the late Marx on, the critical tradition contested functionalism on the
grounds of the science project. In this, class lost its origins in historical
specificity. After the Frankfort school of critical theory shifted the
grounds away from science and toward culture and politics, it became
possible to recognize that the experiences of racialized and gendered peo-
ples not only limited the reach of the concept of class. It made the claims
of class as an objective reality dclass. Fighting to maintain the critical
tradition meant that many scholars were hard-pressed to accept this les-
son. Class, for them, was the concept upon which critique and change
was based. Yet these same scholars recognized the fact that gender and
race were socially constructed concepts and as a result have tried to re-
think class. However, the critical traditions insistence that objective real-
ity needs to exist for critique to have grounds has meant that women and
people of colors other than white have found that they had to move away
from class analysis in order to analyze the experience of people like them-
selves. Other scholars articulated postmodernist and poststructuralist
perspectives to step away from objectivism and determinism while main-
taining a critical perspective. Class has become dclass in social analysis
(Wexler, 1987) because it has had to take too much weight.
Recent reworkings of the concept of class have proved ineffective
largely because of the insistence on the primacy of the concept. My argu-
ment here has been that for class to be reconstituted, it must reaccom-
plished through other forms of difference. My own project is to do this
via race and secondarily via gender, but following Crenshaw (1991), a
host of strategies may be possible in particular contexts, embracing the
intersectionality of identity. Race and gender have primacy at the mo-
ment because they are believed to be central aspects of ones identity,
whereas class has proven to be problematic on these grounds. Yet the
wider point is that intersectionality offers us not a way to reduce differ-
ence to one or another concept but to elaborate it to a constellation. By
considering critical race theory and its implications here, I have attempted
one way to reconstruct class as a strategy. Thus, I have argued that it is
possible for class to serve as a vehicle to maintain productive aspects of
race differences and in suppressing internal hierarchies within the coali-
tion while focusing on the linked fates of the different races.
In another move, I have argued that the gendered nature of schooling
may serve as a lever for us to construct political race projects and to con-
stitute the strategic class-as-coalition. There are other ways to argue from
intersectionality as I indicated earlier. I believe that the role of theorizing
thus is not to determine the best truth but rather to strategize possibilities
that people may employ in everyday life to address inequities. As Guinier
and Torres (2002) argue, however, theorizing is a limited part of the pro-
ject. In practice we can learn what is possible in specific contexts, and rec-
ognize possibilities that theorizing has not considered. After all, the point
is not to analyze the world but change it, even if change does not forever
accomplish our goals.
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CONTRIBUTORS
MICHAEL W. APPLE is John Bascom Professor of Curriculum and Instruc-

tion and Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madi-
son. He has written extensively on the relationship between education
and power and has worked with researchers, governments, unions, and
dissident groups throughout the world to democratize educational re-
search, policy, and practice. Among his books are The State and the Pol-
itics of Knowledge, the twenty-fifth anniversary third edition of his classic
Ideology and Curriculum, The Subaltern Speak, and the expanded sec-
ond edition of Educating the Right Way: Markets, Standards, God,
and Inequality.
RICHARD BEACH is Professor of English Education at the University of Min-

nesota. He is the author of A Teachers Introduction to Reader Response
Theories, and coauthor of Inquiry-based English Instruction: Engaging
Students in Life and Literature, Teaching Literature to Adolescents, and
Teaching Media Literacy through the Web. He is a former President of the
National Conference on Research in Language and Literacy and former
Chair of the NCTE Research Foundation.
ELLEN BRANTLINGER retired from the Department of Curriculum and In-

struction at Indiana University. She has written four books: Politics of So-
cial Class in Secondary Schools, Fighting for Darla, Sterilization of
People with Mental Disabilities, and Dividing Classes: How the Middle
Class Negotiates and Rationalizes School Advantage, and edited a multi-
author volume entitled, Who Benefits from Special Education?: Remedi-
ating (Fixing) Other Peoples Children. As a critical theorist, she has
always been interested in understanding and overcoming oppressive
power differentials among individuals and groups. She has become a
strong advocate for qualitative inquiry and has published articles on that
research design. Although she has researched and written on such diverse
347
348 Contributors
topics as sexuality, sexuality education, social class, ethnicity, gender, dis-

abilities, teacher education, and testing, the connecting thread consis-
tently has been understanding oppression and enabling human rights and
social inclusion. She is perhaps best known for her article, Using Ideol-
ogy: Cases of Nonrecognition of the Politics of Research and Practice in
Special Education, published in the Review of Educational Research.
She directed the Undergraduate Special Education Teacher Education
Programs at Indiana University and then the Graduate Program in Cur-
riculum Studies.
VAN DEMPSEY is Dean of the School of Education at Fairmont State Uni-

versity in West Virginia. Prior to this, he served as director of the Bene-
dum Collaborative and the Benedum Center for Educational Renewal at
West Virginia University, a school-university partnership built on the phi-
losophy of the simultaneous renewal of educator preparation and K12
schools. His primary teaching responsibilities include teacher leadership
and the socio-cultural context of schooling. His primary areas of research
and publication include school-university partnership work, education
policy, and school renewal.
CHERYL FIELDS-SMITH is Assistant Professor of Early Childhood Educa-

tion at the University of Georgia, Athens. Her research interests include
family-school-community partnerships, the development of cultural sen-
sitivity among teacher educators, and home schooling among African-
American families.
MARGARET A. (GRETA) GIBSON is Professor of Education and Anthropol-

ogy at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She has focused her re-
search on the school performance of immigrant and minority youths with
particular attention to home-school-community relationships and to how
school context and peer relations influence student participation and
achievement in high school settings. Her research looks at factors that
promote and impede success in high school for Mexican-descent migrant
youths. In addition to her ongoing work in several multiethnic high
schools in California, she has conducted field research in the U.S. Virgin
Islands, northern India, and Papua New Guinea. Her major publications
include School Connections: U.S. Mexican Youth, Peers, and School
Achievement (edited with P. Gndara and J. Koyama), Minority Status
and Schooling (edited with J. Ogbu), and Accommodation without As-
similation: Sikh Immigrants in an American High School.
BETH HATT is Assistant Professor of Educational Administration and

Foundations at Illinois State University, where she teaches research meth-
Contributors 349
ods and social foundations of education. Her research interests focus

upon issues of race, class, and gender equity within educational contexts.
She is coeditor (with George Noblit) of The Future of Educational Stud-
ies. Her current research explores smartness as a cultural practice
in schools.
DEBORAH HICKS is an educational scholar who studies the language, lives,

and literacies of youths coming of age in poverty. Her latest project draws
from a long-term ethnographic study of young girls growing up in work-
ing poor America. Her work is interdisciplinary in nature, drawing from
the fields of education, gender studies, cultural studies, anthropology,
psychology, and linguistics. She is currently a Visiting Professor in
Womens Studies at Duke University and Professor of Education at the
University of Cincinnati.
BILL J. JOHNSTON is Professor and Chair in the Department of Educational

Leadership and Foundations at the University of Texas, El Paso. His re-
search interests include the examination of educational policy primarily
as the outcome of a coincidence of interests between the state and global
corporations for their mutual benefit; examination of schools as sites to
mediate the effects of corporate policy relative to social justice and eq-
uity; and finally the examination of strategies of instructional leadership
for powerful teaching and learning to counter the effects of accountabil-
ity centered pedagogy.
STEPHANIE JONES is Assistant Professor of Literacy at Teachers College,

Columbia University where she teaches courses on literacy, culture, and
language. Her commitment to social justice through critical literacy prac-
tices informs her pedagogy in graduate courses, working with teachers in
classrooms, and working with elementary-aged children in New York
City and across the Cincinnati metropolitan area. Her research, writing,
and advocacy centers on the intersections of social class, literacy, identity,
and family-school relations. She is the author of Girls, Social Class, and
Literacy: What Teachers Can do to Make a Difference.
JANICE KROEGER is Assistant Professor of Early Childhood Education,

Teaching, Leadership and Curriculum Studies at Kent State University.
Her research and teaching interests are focused on issues of power and
identity in home, school, and community partnerships, early years
teacher development, early childhood policies and practices, and qualita-
tive research methodologies. She has researched in, and written scholarly
work about, social action, agency, and culture and cultural and identity
change in diverse communities. She has focused on the intersections of
350 Contributors
social justice work, activism, school formation and the formation of

schooled subjects (students). Her published works have appeared in such
journals as the Journal of Educational Change and The Urban Review,
she has contributed to or coauthored works in English Education, The
American Educational Review Journal, Early Childhood Research and
Practice, and Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood.
TIMOTHY J. LENSMIRE is Associate Professor of curriculum and instruction

at the University of Minnesota, where he teaches courses on literacy, race,
and critical pedagogy. His past research and writing focused on the pos-
sibilities and problems of progressive and radical approaches to edu-
cation, especially in the teaching and learning of writing. His current
work draws on cultural and critical white studies to investigate how
white people become white. His books include When Children Write:
Critical Re-Visions of the Writing Workshop and Powerful Writing/
Responsible Teaching.
GEORGE W. NOBLIT is Joseph R. Neikirk Professor of Sociology of Educa-

tion and Chair of Culture, Curriculum, and Change Department in the
School of Education at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He
specializes in the sociology of knowledge, school reform, critical race
studies, anthropology of education, and qualitative research methods. He
has three ongoing funded research strands: school reform, race and edu-
cation, and arts and education. His studies of school reform, especially
Comer schools (funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and OERI) have
resulted in three books: The Kids Got Smarter: Case Studies of Successful
Comer Schools, Cultural Matters, and Bringing Systemic Reform to Life.
Continuing a career of research on school desegregation and race equity
in education, he is currently conducting an oral history study with James
Leloudis titled, Roads Not Taken in School Desegregation, funded by
the Spencer Foundation. He is also completing nine years of research by
writing a book about the A Schools Program, an arts-based school re-
form program, with funding from the Kenan Institute for the Arts and
from the Ford Foundation. He also coedits The Urban Review.
DARYL PARKS is Assistant Professor of English Education with the Urban

Teacher Program at Metropolitan State University, St. Paul, Minnesota.
He has received numerous awards for teaching English to urban high
school students and for service within urban communities. In addition to
teaching methods courses to preservice urban teachers, he serves as a con-
sultant to school districts on cultural influences in education. His primary
interests are in the relationships between identity constructions (race,
class, and gender), literacies, and critical pedagogies.
Contributors 351
MAIKE INGRID PHILIPSEN is Associate Professor in the Social Foundations of

Education at Virginia Commonwealth University. Her research interests
center on issues of social justice and equality in education, specifically the
roles of race, gender, and social class in shaping schools and institutions
of higher learning. She studies questions relating to equal opportunities at
both the K12 and college/university levels, employing primarily a socio-
logical perspective and qualitative methodologies. One of her publica-
tions analyzed the cultural consequences of an African-American school
closing for the sake of desegregation. She is the lead faculty member at
the universitys Pff (Preparing Future Faculty) program.
AMANDA HAERTLING THEIN is Assistant Professor of English Education at the

University of Pittsburgh, where she teaches courses on teaching literature
and media, and theory and practice in teaching multicultural literature. Her
research focuses on sociocultural dimensions of student responses to liter-
ature, particularly in terms of gender and social class. She is studying the
ways in which working-class girls responses to literature are negotiated
through competing social worlds and cultural models.
LUIS URRIETA JR. is Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies of Education at

the University of Texas at Austin. His general research interests center on
issues of identity and agency, activism, altruism, new social movements,
and social practice theory. He is specifically interested in Chicana/o and
Indgena identity, and in activism as a social practice in educational
spaces both in the United States and internationally. Methodologically,
his work is grounded in anthropology and in qualitative research meth-
ods. His work specifically makes claims for native anthropology and na-
tive educational research as a political practice and method.
JANE A. VAN GALEN is Professor of Education at the University of Wash-

ington, Bothell. She has published articles on class and education in the
Journal of Educational Change and QSE. She is coeditor of Caring in an
Unjust World: Negotiating Borders and Barriers in Schools.
NAME INDEX
Abel, E., 339340, 340 Becker, H., 245, 264

Abu-Lughod, L., 325, 344 Bejnez, L.F., 106, 110
Aguirre, A., 113114, 119, 137138 Benjamin, S., 239, 264
Ahier, J., 242, 264 Benjamin, W., 334, 344
Akiba, M., 245, 264 Berle, A.A., 35, 49
Allison, D., 13, 57, 84, 152, 156, Berliner, D., 341, 344
163164 Bettie, J., 2, 5, 1213, 149, 150, 153,
Althusser, L., 3940, 47, 49 164, 327330, 344
Anaya, R., 152, 164 Biddle, B., 275, 284, 341, 344
Anijar, K., 302, 310 Billings, D., 298, 310
Anyon, J., viii, x, 237, 264 Blackledge, A., 120, 138
Apple, M.W., vii, ix, x, 10, 13, 4849, Blau, P.M., 45, 49
142, 164, 263264, 314, 339, Block, A.A., 242, 264
344345 Blum, L.,146, 164
Appleman, D., 152, 164 Boler, M., 242, 264
Apted, M., 12, 13 Bonilla-Silva, E.,146, 148, 154, 164,
Archer, M.S., 44, 49 166
Armstrong, L., 245, 264 Booth, A., 203, 230
Aronowitz, S., 2, 13, 148, 164, 172, Bottomore, T.B.,46, 49, 248250, 264
200, 313316, 336, 344 Bourdieu, P., ix, x, 3, 13, 3941, 46,
Aulicino, A., 201 50, 98, 102, 109, 135, 138, 237,
239242, 248249, 263264, 273,
Baker, D.P., 264 276, 284, 318, 322326, 340, 344
Baker, M.P., 156, 164 Bowles, S., 47, 49, 237, 263, 265
Bakhtin, M.M., 57, 61, 74, 79, 81, Brantlinger, E., vi, 23, 5, 7, 9, 13,
84, 204, 219, 229 204, 219, 227, 230, 233, 235268,
Banks, A., 298, 310 273, 276, 279, 284, 318, 345
Baugh, J., 138 Brantlinger, P.M., 244, 265
Baumann, J., 200 Brayboy, B.M.,114, 138
Baumeister, R.F., 262, 264 Bredekamp, S., 207, 230
Beach, R., v, 5, 7, 10, 53, 141166 Bright, J., 203, 230, 231
Beaud, M., 35, 49 Brooks, D., viii, x, 239, 262, 265
Beck, J., 242, 264 Brown, L.M., 2, 14
353
354 Name Index
Brown, T.N., 145, 164 Danforth, S., 245, 268

Brush, S., 26, 28 Davidson, A., 143, 166
Brym, R.J., 46, 49 Davies, C.A., 122, 138
Buck, P.D., 304, 310 Deal, J., 291292, 310
Bullock, H., 5, 13 DeHaan, L., 291292, 310
Burgess, I., 145, 164 Delgado, B.D., 120, 138
Burkett, E., 243 265 Delgado-Gaitan, C., 225, 227, 230
Burnham, J., 35, 53 Demerath, P., 242, 265
Burton, R.L., 238, 265 Dempsey, V., vi, 6, 233, 287311,
Butler, O., 152, 155, 163164 341, 346
Denis, C., 334, 345
Cain, C., 80, 84, 120, 139, 231, 239, Devine, F., viii, ix, x
266 Devine, J., 246, 265
Calhoun, C., 238, 240, 265 Diamond, J., 167, 172, 201
Callahan, R.E., 30, 50 Diamond, R., 283284
Carnoy, M., 47, 50 Domhoff, G.W., 46, 50
Carroll, C.D., 14 Dorris, M., 152, 165
Casella, R., 238, 246, 265 Draper, S.M., 84
Cason, K., 291, 310 Drummond, K., 169, 171, 175, 180,
Chafel, J.A., 2 183, 193, 201
Chandler-Olcott, K., 144145, 166, Duffett, A., 201
300, 311 Dunbar, R.A., 302303, 310
Chatman, J., 246, 265 Duncan, B., 50
Chavkin, N., 171, 200 Duncan, C., 294295, 300, 308,
Chow, S., 28 310
Christopher, R., 10, 14 Duncan, O.D., 45, 4950
Cisneros, S., 152, 165 Dunn, J.F., 203, 230
Clark, R.L., 267 Dyson, A.H., 62, 84
Cohen, P.S., 36, 50 Dyson, M.E., 242, 265
Cohen-Vogel, L., 167, 170171, 202
Colbert, R., 171, 183, 201 Eaker, D., 340, 346
Coles, R., 13, 57, 84 Eaker-Rich, D., 340, 346
Collins, J., 61, 84 Eckert, P., 143, 165
Collins, P.H., 330, 345 Eder, D., 243244, 266
Copple, C., 207, 230 Eder, K., 29, 50
Cose, E., 242, 265 Edwards, A., 145, 164
Counts, G., 263, 265 Edwards, P., 170, 196197, 201
Craft, P.A., 267 Ehrenreich, B., viii, xi, 3, 14, 271,
Crenshaw, K.W., 287, 310, 318, 327, 274, 278, 284
331, 344345 Eisenhart, M., 207, 230
Creswell, J., 177, 201 Elias, M.J., 242, 266
Crompton, R., 29, 34, 50 Emerson, C., 231
Cuccaro-Alamin, S., 14 Emerson, R., 208, 230
Engels, F., 3132, 51
Dahrendorf, R., 3739, 50 Epstein, J., 167203, 212, 215,
Danaher, G., 119, 140 230231
Dance, L.J., x, xi Erdrich, L., 152, 165
Name Index 355
Erickson, F., 230 Golding, P., 314, 345

Erikson, E., 208, 256, 266 Gomez, K., 167, 172, 201, 203, 230
Evans, C.C., 244, 266 Gonzlez Baker, S., 125, 139
Gonzlez, K.P., 115, 139
Fabos, B., 151, 165 Goodenow, C., 102, 110
Fallows, J., 58, 84 Goodlad, J., 279, 284
Fantasia, R., viii, xi Gorman, T., 169, 179, 201
Farkas, S., 171, 201 Gorz, A., 43, 50
Faulkner, C., 2, 14 Grady, K.E., 102, 110
Feagin, J.R., 146, 159, 165 Gramsci, A., 43, 50, 241, 249, 266,
Featherman, D.L., 45, 5051 316
Ferguson, M., 314, 345 Grande, S., 114, 139, 334, 345
Fielding, J.L., 208, 230 Grant, C.A., 2, 14, 238, 266
Fielding, N.G., 208, 230 Graue, M.E., 208, 219, 227, 230
Fields-Smith, C., v, 8, 54, 167202 Greenfield, D., 167, 169170, 201
Finders, M.J., 266 Greenfield, P.M., 231
Fine, M., vii, x, xi, 14, 146, 148, 165, Griffith, A., 169, 182, 202
238, 266 Groves, W.B., 28
Fisher, S.L., 297, 300, 311 Gubbay, J., 34, 50
Fleischer, L.E., 242, 266 Gubrium, J.F., 240, 266
Foster, M., 173, 187, 201 Guinier, L., 147, 165, 317318,
Foucault, M., 61, 84, 334, 339 331338, 340, 344345
Frank, T., 141, 143, 165 Gutierrez, K., 62, 84
Freeman, M., 172, 201
Freire, P., 57, 61, 66, 81, 84, 272, Hall, J., 50, 314, 316317, 345
280, 284 Hall, S., 77, 84
Frensch, P.A., 203, 231 Hallinan, M., 315, 345
Fretz, R., 208, 230 Halsey, A., 313, 345
Fullinwider, R.K., 147, 165 Harker, R., 273, 285
Harkins, A., 306307, 311
Galdwin, T., 114, 139 Harpalani, V., 84
Gndara, P., 114116, 124, 132135, Harrington, M., 58, 84
139 Harvey, D., 142, 165, 245, 266
Gans, H.J., 219, 230 Hatt, B., v, 17, 1928
Gavazzi, S.M., 311 Hatt-Echeverra, B.A., 114, 124,
Gaventa, J., 293294, 311 139
Gavin, K., 167, 169170, 201 Hauser, R.M., 45, 5051
Gee, J.P., 79, 84, 144, 165 Heath, S.B., 6162, 64, 84
Gibson, M.A., vii, 7, 53, 87110 Hernandez, M., 219, 231
Giddens, A., 34, 38, 4142, 4446, Hicks, D., v, 5, 7, 10, 53, 5585
50, 110 Hidaldgo, N., 203, 231
Giles, H.C., 204, 230 Hill, G.R., 76, 84
Gilligan, C., 340, 345 Hinson, G., 138139
Gilroy, P., 88, 110 Holland, D., 80, 84, 114, 120121,
Gintis, H., 47, 49, 237, 263, 265 139, 228, 231, 239240, 266
Goesling, B., 264 Holloway, J., 118, 139
Goffman, E., 240, 262, 266 Holstein, J.A., 240, 266
356 Name Index
hooks, b., 1, 14, 26, 28, 5657, 61, Ladson-Billings, G., 280, 284, 330,
81, 84, 146, 165 345
Horrigan, M., 282, 284 Lareau, A., 3, 14, 169171, 201, 204,
Horton, M., 57, 61, 81, 84 212, 214, 219, 227, 231
Horvat, E.M., 170, 201, 212, 227, 231 Lassiter, L.E., 138139
Hudak, G.M., 239, 266 Laungani, P., 256, 267
Hurd, C.A., 9495, 101 Lave, J., 114, 120, 139
Hurston, Z.N., 24, 152, 165 Lawson, M.A., 228, 231
Hurtado, S., 115, 139 Lease, A.M., 245, 267
Lee, C., 62, 84
Iyengar, S.S., 219, 231 Lee, V.E., 263, 267
Lensmire, T., v, 5, 53, 141, 152,
Jacobson, J., 251, 266 164165
Jacoby, H., 50 Leontiev, A.N., 121, 139
Jencks, C., 45, 51 LeTendre, G.K., 264
Jennings, M., 342, 246 Levin, H.M., 47, 50
Jeynes, W., 167, 201 Levine, R., viii, xi
Johnson, J., 201 Lewis, C., 150151, 165
Johnston, B.J., 2952 Linkon, S.L., 1, 10, 14, 155, 165
Jones, S., v, 5, 7, 10, 53, 5585 Lipsitz, G., 245, 267
Joyce, P., 314, 345 LiPuma, E., 238, 240, 265
Jung, H., 143, 164 Lohman, R.A., 296297, 300, 311
Lucey, H., 63, 83, 85
Karabel, J., 313, 345 Lukacs, G., 42, 51
Katz, M., 14, 276, 277, 284 Lundell, D., 143, 164
Keefe, N., 201 Luttrell, W., 82, 85
Kendrick, D., 340, 346 Lynch, K., 149, 283, 285
Kenway, J., 298299, 311 Lynch, M., 28
Ketter, J., 151, 165 Lyon, G.E., 55, 85
Kihn, P., 239, 266
Kimmel, M.S., 246, 266 MacKenzie, L., 11, 14
Kingston, M.H., 152, 165 MacLeod, J., 238, 242, 267
Knapp, M.S., 280281, 284 Mahar, C., 273, 285
Kogawa, J., 152, 265 Maher, F., 147, 165
Kolakowski, L., 43, 51 Mahony, P., 15, 314, 345
Kotlowitz, A., 271, 284 Majd-Jabbari, M., 204, 230
Kozol, J., 155, 165, 238, 266, 271, Malka, A., 246, 265
284 Malloy, C., 340, 346
Kraack, A., 298299, 311 Malloy, W., 340, 346
Kristeva, J., 245, 266 Mann, H., 281, 285
Kroeger, J., vi, 8, 54, 203231 Marshall, N., 201, 170
Kuriloff, P., 167, 170171, 188, 191, Marx, F., 201
193, 201 Marx, K., vi, 2, 20, 29, 3139, 4243,
4647, 51, 102, 110, 235268,
Labaree, D.F., 238, 266 313, 315, 329, 343
Lachicotte, W., Jr., 80, 84, 120, 139, Maslow, A., 256, 262, 267
231, 239, 266 McCarthney, K., 201
Name Index 357
McCarthy, C., 345 Ohmann, R., 142, 166

McFall, R.M., 245, 267 Okagaki, L., 203, 231
McGrath, B., 167, 170171, 188, Oliver, A., 339, 344
191, 193, 301, 311 Ortner, S.B., 8788, 92, 102, 108, 110
McGrath, D., 201 Osterman, K.F., 102, 110
McHigh, J., 201
McIntosh, P., 155, 162, 165 Packer, M., 277278, 285
McIntyre, A., 278279, 285 Padilla, R., 115, 138139
McKenry, P.C., 311 Pahl, R., 29, 51
McLaren, P., 238, 245, 267 Panelli, R., 295, 300, 311
McNall, S., viii, xi Park, B., 65, 85
McRobbie, A., 63, 80, 83, 85 Parker, S., 244, 266
Means, G.C., 35, 49 Parks, D., v, 5, 53, 141, 151164
Melody, J., 63, 83, 85 Parsons, T., 36, 51
Mendoza-Denton, N., 95, 96, 110 Payne-Bourcy, L., 144145, 166, 300,
Merton, D., 243244, 267 311
Merton, R., 345 Pelez, E., 118, 139
Meyer, J., 318326, 330, 338, 341, Perrucci, R., 15, 263, 267
346 Phelan, P., 143, 166
Mezirow, J., 276, 285 Philipsen, M., vi, 9, 233, 269286,
Michalowki, R., 28 317
Miller, J., 61, 85 Pierce, J., 147, 166
Mills, C.W., 44, 5152 Pink, W.T., 239, 264, 267, 343, 346
Mitchell, T., 346 Polkinghorne, D.E., 49, 51
Moore, R.M., III., 292, 310, 311 Postone, M., 238, 240, 265
Morris, J., 170, 201 Poulantzas, N., 40, 51
Morris, M., 13 Prillaman, R., 340, 346
Morris, P., 231
Morrow, R., 114, 139, 326, 346 Quiroz, B., 231
Morson, G.S., 231
Reay, D., 1, 3, 7, 15, 63, 83, 85, 239,
Nayak, A., 145, 161, 166 267
Nelson, M., 339340, 344 Reisigl, M., 146, 157
Newcomb, H., 303, 311 Resch, R.P., 3940, 51
Newitz, A., 304305, 311 Ricento, T., 95, 110
Noblit, G.W., vi, 6, 810, 13, 233, Riley, R., 15
239, 264, 267, 313345 Robertson, S.L., 2, 15, 44, 51
Noddings, N., 279, 285, 339340 Roediger, D.R., 146, 166
Noguera, P.A., 238, 267 Rogers, H. Jr., 277, 285
Noonan, A., 201 Roln, C., 110
Nunez, A., 14 Rolon-Dow, R., 339340, 346
Rorty, R., 263, 267
ODair, S., 2, 15 Rossides, D.W., 44, 51
ONeill, C., 9, 14, 285 Rothstein-Fisch, C., 231
Oakes, J., 238, 267 Roundfield Lucas, S., 276, 285
Oboler, S., 118, 139 Rupp, J.C.C., 40, 51
Oettingen, G., 279, 285 Ryan, W., 245, 267
358 Name Index
Sacks, H., 245, 267 Thein, A.H., v, 5, 53, 141, 151,

Sadowski, M., 143, 166, 268 163164
Savage, M., 4648, 51 Therborn, G., 4647, 51
Schirato, T., 119, 140 Thomas, D., 169, 179, 200
Schudson, M., 279, 285 Thompson, E.P., 51
Schwartz, T., 66, 85 Thompson, J.B., 249, 268
Scott, J., 326, 340, 346 Thompson, T., 236, 268
Scott, M.A., 13 Thorkildsen, R., 167, 171, 185,
Scott-Jones, D., 170171, 202 202
Seidman, I., 177, 202 Tice, K., 298, 310
Selingo, J., 26, 28 Torres, C.A., 114, 139, 326, 346
Senese, G., 30, 51, 285 Torres, G., 147, 165, 317318,
Sewell, W.H., 45, 51 331338, 340, 344345
Shavitt, Y., 282, 284 Tough, P., 59, 85
Shaw, L., 208, 345 Tozer, S., 30, 51, 285
Sheidegger, T.H., 311 Trachtenberg, A., 36, 52
Sheldon, S., 170, 200, 202203, 231 Trotman, M., 167, 202
Shipler, D., xi Trumbull, E., 231
Shumar, W., 3, 212, 231 Turner, J.H., 37, 52
Siddle Walker, V., 202
Siu, S., 231 Updike, J., 161, 166
Skeggs, B., 63, 83, 85 Urrieta, L., v, 5, 78, 10, 113140,
Skinner, D., 80, 84, 120, 139, 231, 122, 135, 334, 346
239, 266
Skinner, J., 145, 164 Valds, G., 95, 111, 117, 140, 219,
Sleeter, C., 2, 14, 238, 266, 278, 285 227, 231
Smith, B.E., 293294, 311 Valencia, R.R., 245, 268
Smith, D., 1920, 28, 240, 267 Valenzuela, A., 238, 268, 339340,
Smith, S.Z., 219, 230 346
Smith, T.J., 245, 268 Van Galen, J., v, 16, 240, 268, 273,
Smrekar, C., 167, 170171, 202 285, 340341, 345346
Soltis, J., 238 Viken, R.J., 245, 267
Somers, M., 51, 314, 346 Villenas, S., 117, 140
Spencer, M.B., 3536, 84, 207208 Violas, P., 3051, 285
Stallybrass, P., 242, 268
Stanton-Salazar, R., 107, 111, 115, 140 Waggoner, K., 169, 182, 202
Steedman, C., 63, 83, 85 Walkerdine, V., 4, 5, 15, 63, 79,
Stein, M., 167, 171, 185, 202 8283, 85, 346
Stewart, E.R., 292, 311 Walsh, D.J., 208, 230
Stipek, D., 169, 171, 175, 180, 183, Waters, M., 29, 51
193, 199, 201 Webb, J., 119, 140
Strike, K., 279, 285 Weber, M., 29, 31, 3334, 36, 38, 45,
Swap, S.M., 231 47, 52
Weis, L., viii, x, xi, 2, 12, 1415, 146,
Tate, W., 330, 345 148, 165, 238, 268
Tatum, B., 158, 166 Wentzel, K.R., 208, 231
Tetreault, M.K., 147, 165 Wergin, J., 283284
Name Index 359
Wexler, P., 15, 238, 246248, Wright, E.O., viii, 314, 346
250251, 260, 263, 316 Wright, S.E., 245, 268
Whisnant, D., 300, 311 Wysong, E., 3, 15, 263, 267
White, A., 268
Wiegman, R., 146, 166 Yon, D.A., 153, 166
Wilkes, C., 273, 285 Young, I.M., 263, 268
Williams, D., 171, 200 Yu, H., 143, 166, 217
Williams, R., 109, 111
Williams, V.B., 6869, 85 Zandy, J., 2, 15
Willingham, A., 293294, 311 Zeitlin, M., 33, 46, 52
Willis, P., 4, 15, 238, 241, 244, 260, Zembylas, M., 242, 264
268 Zmroczek, C., 314, 345
Wodak, R., 146, 157, 161 Zweig, M., 3, 15, 1723, 177, 202
Wray, M., 304, 310311
SUBJECT INDEX
A Nation at Risk, 30, 51 class, correspondence theory, 240

ability grouping, 122, 137 class, differences, 54, 64, 76, 94, 141,
accountability policy, 340342 143165, 168169, 199, 320, 328,
achievement gaps, 37, 199 330
activist teaching, 62, 64, 81 class, identification, 34, 42, 46, 88
affirmative action, 95, 115, 132, class, position, 3134, 41, 46, 53,
145150, 157163, 278 172173, 226, 329
alienation, 144, 248, 250259 class, theory, 29, 3133, 41, 47, 36,
alienation, self-, 250, 253 38, 317
answerability, 81 contextual geography, 115
Appalachia, 5759, 79, 287311 corporatism, 36, 38
Appalachian Culturalism, 296297 Critical Legal Studies, 327, 331
Critical Multiculturalism, 151
bilingual education, 95, 124125, 278 Critical Race Theory, 13, 152, 331,
Bureau of Labor Statistics, 3, 13, 282, 338, 341, 344
285
deficit model, 149
capital, cultural, ix, 41, 47, 94, 102, Department of Health and Human
108, 114, 136137, 144, 203, Services, 269, 284
225226, 240, 248, 324 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of
capital, economic, ix, 24, 238, 240, 322 Mental Disorders, 265
capital, social, ix, 54, 107, 116, 135, dialogism, 120
170, 188, 236237, 276, 296, 322 Domestic Colonialism, 296
capitalism, 29, 3536, 4041,
142146, 239, 246250, 260264 educational achievement, 23, 150,
caring relations, 339341 221, 238, 251252
Center for Individual Rights, 147, 164 educational attainment, 30, 45, 116,
Century Foundation, The, 142, 165 118, 133135, 254, 282
class, analysis, ix, x, 29, 31, 33, 38, educational mobility, v, 113116,
4547, 314315, 318, 323, 335, 122, 124, 133135
338, 343 educational policy, viii, 2
class, consciousness, 33, 4143, 46 educational reform, 1, 281282
361
362 Subject Index
English as a Second Language (ESL), magnet school, 122, 126, 173, 175,
124, 207 190, 199
English Language Development marginalization, v, 53, 87111, 149,
(ELD), 95, 99, 103 191, 217, 288, 295, 297, 303, 305,
ethnic identity, 8, 130 309310
ethnic tensions, 100101 Marxist theory, 3542
ethnography, 57, 6264, 81, 122 meritocratic schooling, 238239, 247,
262263
father tongue, 19, 20 Migrant Student Association (MSA),
figured worlds, v, 80, 114, 119122, 93, 104
130131, 133137 monolingualism, 108
Fluent English Proficient (FEP), 96
functionalism, Parsonian, 30, 3537 National Center for Educational
functionalism, structural-, 30, 37 Statistics, 14, 28
National Education Goals Panel, 204,
habitus, v, 39, 41, 113140, 149, 231
240241, 248, 273, 276 New London Group, 85, 61
heteroglossia, vi, 54, 201231 No Child Left Behind, 238
home-school relations, vi, 54, 72, non-poor, vi, 296286
201231 North American Free Trade Agreement
House of Representatives, 14 (NAFTA), 117
hybrid discourse, 150151
hybridity, 53, 62, 81, 120, 129 OxyContin, 59
identity formation, 31, 46, 239, 245, parental involvement, v, 54, 82,
247251, 294 167202, 204, 214
identity, class, 2, 11, 74, 304, Parent-Teacher Organization (PTO),
328329 221
identity, hybrid, 82 PATHWAYS, 216222, 228
Ideological State Apparatus, 40 pedagogy, activist, 61, 64, 66
Imperatively Coordinated Associa- pedagogy, critical literacy, 63
tions (ICAs), 37 pedagogy, of class, 912
individualism, 53, 154, 157, 159161, Poverty Coalition, 270, 274, 285
163, 147148, 150151, 219, 256, power-with, 333, 336
292, 319320, 329330, 336, 338 practice theory, 88, 101, 114, 120
institutional racism, 151, 155, 157, Proposition 209, 95, 132, 149150
161163, 199 Proposition 227, 95
intersectionality, 233, 287288, 318,
326332, 344 realism, magic, 334335
resistance, 10, 13, 35, 80, 152, 239,
labor market, 3, 9, 1112, 282283, 241242, 250, 260, 288, 293,
296 297298, 326, 329
Limited English Proficient (LEP), 95 reverse discrimination, 150, 157
localism, 296, 302 rurality, 287289, 291, 294296,
Lower Bond Hill, 5681 299, 301, 308
Subject Index 363
Save the Children Foundation, 289, structuration, 4446

311 student achievement, 167168
scholarship, on class, 2, 114
school funding, 144, 272273, 275 Talented and Gifted (TAG), 207
school reform, 3, 10, 204, 263, 273 theme school, 173, 175, 184185
serious games, 91, 108 tracking, 108, 122, 126128,
social capital theory, 170 130131, 135, 137, 144, 275, 279
social class, 1, 3, 5, 12, 17, 30, 34, 53, tracking, mechanisms, 130131,
82, 87, 94, 108, 113, 117, 122, 137
167177, 199200
social class, markers, 5 U.S. Census Bureau, 91, 111
social mobility, 6, 7, 27, 39, 45, 53, upward mobility, 8, 328
108, 122, 137, 252253, 263, utterances, 204
332
social theory, 2, 17, 29, 31, 33, white privilege, 24, 53, 145163, 278,
3536, 39, 42, 44, 317318 302, 304
splitting, 79 whitestream, 114, 116117, 120121,
stratification, class, 4, 12, 28, 53, 92, 124, 127, 129, 135137, 334335,
108, 279, 281 340
stratification, ethnic, 91 white trash, v, 1927, 118, 156, 288,
stratification, social, 102 302, 304305, 307
EDUCATION / SOCIOLOGY
LATE TO CLASS
Social Class and Schooling in the New Economy
Jane A. Van Galen and George W. Noblit, editors
Foreword by Michael W. Apple
Late to Class presents theoretical, empirical, and pedagogical perspectives on social class
and schooling in the United States. Grounding their analyses at the intersections of class,
ethnicity, gender, geography, and schooling, the contributors examine the educational expe-
riences of poor, working class, and middle class students against the backdrop of complicated
class stratification in a shifting global economy. Together, they explore the salience of class
in understanding the social, economic, and cultural landscapes within which young people
in the United States come to understand the meaning of their formal education in times of
changing opportunity.
one of the most important characteristics of the book is its attempt to answer the
question of What is to be done? By taking seriously the issue of emancipatory pedagogies (the
plural is crucial here), [the authors] are not satisfied with bearing witness to negativity
although this is a crucial act for researchers to engage in. They also want to open the spaces
for possible interruption and intervention. As I have argued at length elsewhere, this is one of
the more significant roles that critical scholars can play in a time of conservative attacks on
everything we hold dear this is a book that deserves our attention.
from the Foreword by Michael W. Apple
Anyone who reads this volume will find it difficult to deny the many ways in which
class can shape and be shaped by the experiences of children in schools. This is a ground-
breaking book.
Cynthia Gerstl-Pepin, coauthor of Re-framing Educational
Politics for Social Justice
JANE A. VAN GALEN is Professor of Education at the University of Washington at Bothell

and the coeditor (with Deborah Eaker-Rich) of Caring in an Unjust World: Negotiating Borders
and Barriers in Schools, also published by SUNY Press. GEORGE W. NOBLIT is Joseph R.
Neikirk Distinguished Professor of Sociology of Education at the University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill. His many books include Cultural Matters: Lessons Learned from Field Studies
of Several Leading School Reform Strategies (coedited with William T. Pink).
A volume in the SUNY series,

Power, Social Identity, and Education
Lois Weis, editor
State University of New York Press

www.sunypress.edu

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Late to

Edited by Jane A. Van Galen and George W. Noblit

Lois Weiss, editor

State University of New York Press

2007 State University of New York

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever

For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY

Production by Diane Ganeles

Library of Congress Cataloging-in Publication Data

PART 1: GETTING TO CLASS

1. Growing Up as Poor, White Trash:

PART 2: CLASS WORK

3. Living Class as a Girl 55

8. Social Heteroglossia: The Contentious Practice or Potential

PART 3: AFTER CLASS

9. (Re)Turning to Marx to Understand the Unexpected Anger

As I began writing this foreword, the images of the tragedies unfolding

The realization of such nuances may make class analysis more

The authors included here, recognize the importance of these struggles

Jane A. Van Galen

Nowhere is there a more intense silence about the realities of class

. . . profound economic, political, and intellectual changes marking

The authors in this volume have worked to illuminate what few in

dards-based reform policies promise that after a long history of sorting

scarcity of their qualifications and, consequently, their positions in the

In this volume, then, scholars will examine the educational experi-

Coming of Age in the Shifting Landscape of Class

themselves (and in the process, reinvent themselves) through a series of

kind as friendships were increasingly organized by race/ethnicity and

Social Mobility: Probing the Fractures in the System

as an avenue of social mobility. We are long overdue for scrutiny of the

Poor and Working-Class Pedagogy

LOOKING MORE CLOSELY AT WHAT IS THERE. As academics have examined

RETHINKING A PEDAGOGY OF CLASS. Yet quiet resistance cannot ultimately

This work is complicated in part by our confused discourse about

Someday, middle-class students may understand that becoming educated

Carrying the Project Forward

scholarly work done in collaboration with public schoolteachers, and with

. 1993. The politics of social class in secondary school: Views of affluent

We came up with the title Late to Class on a walk through downtown

This is particularly applicable to dominant notions of what is appropriate

later to avoid increasing their accidental rate of injury. My father broke

Race and Class

To pay for college, I was fortunate enough to receive a Pell Grant, a

me during times of financial desperation, I would not have finished grad-

not be abandoned, it may require reconceptualization. Consequently, we

Karl Marx (18181883)

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class

Max Weber (18641920)

analytic construct; status groups, which tend to be actual social groups;

The Competing Logic of Industrial Society

monied corporations (Trachtenberg, 1982, p. 3). Corporatism and in-

stratification of SES positions, in terms of their contribution to maintain-

that social conflict tends to become polarized as conflict between the

1. The most significant set of changes to be found in the contempo-

For purposes of our discussion, the essential features of this approach

legitimation of assumptions of meritocracy and processes of credentialism